W-* ^- ir-^ , Memoirs of a Midget 44 BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE THREE MULLA-MULGARS Illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop. THE story concerns the adventures of three monkeys of royal blood ... a tale of strange creatures and strange landscapes, of adventures and misadventures in faery forests. One of those rare books that everyone will love. "Miss Lathrop's illustrations have placed her, at a bound, in the first rank of American imaginative illustrators. — Chicago Evening Post. Boxed, $4.00 net at all bookshops NEW YORK: ALFRED A. KNOPF MEMOIRS ^MIDGET ^ii^^^^^^^^^^O^ »\«\LTER*/.MARE NEW YORK MCMXXI ALFRED 'A' KNOPF *.♦.« *.-•• *.-.« *.-#' »•-•' *.♦.' *.*.« •*%• •'T 7 .* *«-T* *7-7' ♦I 7 ;* S 7 ;* COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY WALTER DE LA MARE Publishtd, January, 1922 Set up and printed by th< Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamtorv, N. Y. Paper furnished by II". /•'. Etherington & Co., New York, X . Y. Bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass. MANUFACTURED IN T N ITKli STATKS <>K AMERICA TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER A wild beast there is in AZgypt, called orix, which the Mgyp- tians say, doth stand full against the dog starve when it riseth, lookcth wistly upon it, and tcstifieth after a sort by snccsing, a kind of worship. . . . Philemon Holland. 'Did'st thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass; and the heaven o'er our heads, like her looking-glass, only gives its a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. . . .' John Webster. 'Provoke them not, fair sir, with tempting words; the heavens are gracious. . . .' Thomas Kyd. Contents Introduction 13 Lyndsey 19 Beechwood 71 Wanderslore 155 Lyme Regis 239 London 263 Monks' House 355 Wanderslore 399 Lyndsey 433 Memoirs of a Midget Introduction A FEW introductory and explanatory remarks are due, I think, to the reader of the following Memoirs. The Memoirs themselves will disclose how I became acquainted with Miss M. They also refer here and there to the small part I was enabled to take in straightening matters out at what was a critical juncture in her affairs, and in securing for her that inde- pendence which enabled her to live in the privacy she loved, with- out any anxiety as to ways and means. At the time, it is clear that she considered me a dilatory intermediary. I had not realized how extreme was her need. But she came at last to take a far too generous view of these trifling little services — services as gener- ously rewarded, since they afforded me the opportunity of fre- quently seeing her, and so of becoming, as I hope, one of her most devoted friends. One of the duties devolving on me as her sole executor — certain unusual legal proceedings having been brought to completion — was the examination of her letters and papers. Amongst these were her Memoirs — which I found sealed up with her usual scrupulous neatness in numerous small, square, brown- paper packages, and laid carefully away in a cupboard in her old nursery. They were accompanied by a covering letter addressed to myself. Miss M.'s handwriting was even more minute than one might naturally, though not perhaps justifiably, have antici- pated. Her manuscript would therefore have been difficult enough for aging eyes to decipher, even if it had not been almost inextricably interlined, revised and corrected. Literary com- position to this little woman-of-letters was certainly no "primrose path." The packages were therefore handed over to a trust- worthy typist ; and, at my direction, one complete and accurate copy was made of their contents. After careful consideration, and after disguising the names of 13 Memoirs of a Midget certain persons and places to preclude every possibility of giving offence — even Mrs Percy Maudlen, for instance, if she ever scans these pages, may blush unrecognized ! — I concluded that though I was under no absolute ooligation to secure the publica- tion of the Memoirs, this undoubtedly had been Miss M.'s in- tention and wish. At the same time, and for similar reasons, I decided that their publication should not take place until after my death. Instructions have therefore been left by me to this effect. Here then my editorial duties begin and end. Noth- ing has been altered ; nothing suppressed. Even if such a task were within my province, I should not ven- ture to make any critical estimate of Miss M.'s work. I am not a writer : and, as a reader, have an inveterate preference to be allowed to study and enjoy my authors with as little external in- tervention as possible. The perusal of the Memoirs has afforded me the deepest possible pleasure. The serious-minded may none the less dismiss a midget's lucubrations as trifling ; and no doubt — it could hardly be otherwise — a more practised taste than mine will discover many faults, crudities, and inconsistencies in them, though certain little prejudices on Miss M.'s side may not be so easily detectable. Whatever their merits or imperfections may be, I should be happy to think that the following pages may prove as interesting to other readers — however few — as they have been to myself. My own prejudices, I confess, are in Miss M.'s favour. In- deed, she herself assured me in the covering letter to which reference has been made, that a chance word of mine had been her actual incentive to composition — the remark, in fact, that "the truth about even the least of things — c. g., your Self, Miss M. ! — may be a taper in whose beam one may peep at the truth about everything." I cannot recall the occasion, or this little apophthegm. Indeed, only with extreme reluctance would I have helped to launch my small friend on her gigantic ordeal. As a matter-of-fact, she had a little way of carrying off scraps of the conversation of the "common-sized," as a bee carries off a drop of nectar, and of transforming them into a honey all her own. As characteristic of her is the fact that during the whole time she was engaged on her writing (and there is ample evidence in 14 Memoirs of a Midget ner manuscript that, whether in fatigue, disinclination, or despair, she sometimes left it untouched for weeks together) she never made the faintest allusion to it. Authors, I believe — if I may take the elder Disraeli for my authority — are seldom so secretive concerning their activities. No less characteristically, her letter to me was dated February 14th. Her Memoirs were to be my Valentine. " 'Little drops of water . . .' my dear Sir Walter," she wrote; "you know the rest. Nevertheless, if only I had been given but one sharp spark of genius, what 'infinite pains' I should have been spared. Yet what is here concerns only my early days, and chiefly one long year of them. I might have written on — almost ad infinitum. liut I did not, because I feared to weary us bodi — of myself. The years that have followed my 'coming of age' have been outwardly uneventful; and other people's thoughts, I find, are not so interesting as their experiences. There's much to forgive in what I have written — the rawness, the self-consciousness, the vanity, the folly. I am older now; but am I wiser — or merely not so young? "Just as it stands, then, I shall leave my story to, and for, you. . . . Again and again, as I have pored over the scenes of my memory, I have asked myself: What can life be about? What does it mean? What was my true course? Where my compass? How many times, too, have I vainly speculated what inward difference being a human creature of my dimen- sions really makes. What is — deep, deep in — at variance be- tween Man and Midget? You may discover this; even if / never shall. For after all, life's beads are all on one string, however loosely threaded they may seem to be. "I have tried to tell nothing but the truth about myself. But I realize that it cannot be the whole truth. For while so engaged (just as when one peers into a looking-glass in the moonlight) a something has at times looked out of some secret den or niche in me, and then has vanished. Supposing, then, my dear Sir W.. my story convinces you that all these years you have unawares been harbouring in your friendship not a woman, scarcely a human be- ing, but an ASP! Oh dear, and oh dear! Well, there are three and-thirty ingredients (ingrediments as I used to call them, when I was a child) in that sovran antidote, Venice Treacle. Scatter a 15 Memoirs of a Midget pennyweight of it upon my tombstone; and so lay my in-fi-ni-te- si-mal ap-pa-ri-ti-on ! "Maybe though, there are not so very many vital differences between 'midgets' and people of the common size; no more, per- haps, than there are between them and 'the Great.' Even then it is possible that after reading my small, endless story you may be very thankful that you are not a Midget too. "Whether or not, I have tried to be frank, if not a Warning. Keep or destroy what I have written, as you will. But please show it to nobody until nobody would mind. And now, good-bye. ' "M." There was a tacit compact between Miss M. and myself that I should visit her at Lyndsey about once a month. Business, indisposition, advancing age, only too frequently made the journey impracticable. But in general, I would at such intervals find my- self in her company at her old house, Stonecote ; drinking tea with her, gossiping, or reading to her, while she sat in her chair beside my book, embroidering her brilliant tiny flowers and beetles and butterflies with her tiny needle, listening or day-dreaming or musing out of the high window at the prospect of Chizzel Hill. At times she was an extremely quiet companion. At others she would rain questions on me, many of them exceedingly uncon- ventional, on a score of subjects at once, scarcely pausing for answers which I was frequently at a loss to give. In a mixed company she was, perhaps, exaggeratedly conscious of her minute- stature. But in these quiet talks — that shrill-sweet voice, those impulsive little gestures — she forgot it altogether. Not so her visitor, who must confess to having been continually convicted in her presence of a kind of clumsiness and gaucherie — and that, I confess, not merely physical. To a stranger this experience, however whole- some, might be a little humiliating. When interested, Miss M. would sit perfectly still, her hands tightly clasped in her lap, her eyes fixed with a piercing, yet curiously remote, scrutiny. In complete repose, her features lost this keenness, and she became an indescribably beautiful little figure, in her bright-coloured clothes, in the large quiet room. I can think of no comparison that would not seem fanciful. Her 16 Memoirs of a Midget self is to some extent in her hook. And yet that unique volatile presence, so frail, yet so vigorous, "so very nearly nothing," in her own whimsical phrase, is only fitfully manifest. Naturally enough, she loved solitude. But 1 am inclined to think she indulged in it to excess. It was. at any rate, in solitude that she wrote her hook; and in solitude apparently that her un- known visitor found her, in the following mysterious circum- stances. The last of our reunions — and one no less happy than the rest — was towards the end of the month of March. On the morning of the following 25th of April 1 received a telegram summoning me to Lyndsey. I arrived there the same afternoon, and was ad- mitted by Mrs Bowater, Miss M.'s excellent, lint somewhat Dick- ensian, housekeeper, then already a little deaf and elderly. I found her in extreme distress. It appeared that the evening before, about seven o'clock, Mrs Bowater had heard voices in the house — Miss M.'s and another's. Friendly callers were infrequent; un- familiar ones extremely rare ; and Mrs Bowater confessed that she had felt some curiosity, if not concern, as to who this stranger might he, and how he had gained admission. She blamed her- self beyond measure — though I endeavoured to reassure the goo J woman — for not instantly setting her misgivings at rest. Hearing nothing more, except the rain beating at the basement window, at half-past seven she went upstairs and knocked at Miss M .'s door. The large, pleasant room — her old nursery — at the top of the house, was in its usual scrupulous order, but vacant. Nothing was disarranged, nothing unusual, except only that a slip of paper had been pinned to the carpet a little beyond the threshold, with this message: "I have been called away. — M." This communication, far from soothing, only increased Mrs Bowater's anxiety. She searched the minute Sheraton ward- robe, and found that a garden hat and cape were missing. She waited a while — unlike her usual self — at a loss what to be do- ing, and peering out of the window. But as darkness was corn- in- on, and Miss M. rarely went out in windy or showery weather, or indeed descended the staircase without assistance, she became so much alarmed that a little before eight she set out to explore the garden with a stable lantern, and afterwards hur- ried off to the village for assistance. 17 Memoirs of a Midget As the reader will himself discover, this was not the first oc- casion on which Miss M. had given her friends anxiety. The house, the garden, the surrounding district, her old haunts at Wanderslore were repeatedly submitted at my direction to the most rigorous and protracted search. Watch was kept on the only gipsy encampment in the neighbourhood, near the Heath. Advertisement failed to bring me any but false clues. At length even hope had to be abandoned. Miss M. had been "called away." By whom? I ask myself: on what errand? for what purpose? So clear and unhurried was the writing of her last message as to preclude, I think, the afflicting thought that her visitor had been the cause of any apprehension or anxiety. An even more tragic eventuality is out of the question. After the events recorded in her last chapter not only had she made me a certain promise, but her later life at Lyndsey had been, apparently, perfectly serene and happy. Only a day or two before she had laughed up at her housekeeper, "Why, Mrs Bowater, there's not room enough in me for all that's there !" Nor is it to be assumed that some "inward" voice — her own fre- quent term — had summoned her away; for Mrs Bowater im- movably maintains that its tones reached her ear, though she her- self was at the moment engaged in the kitchen referred to in the first chapter of the Memoirs. Walter Dadus Pollacke. Brunswick House, Beech wood. 18 Lyndsey Chapter One SOME few years ago a brief account of me found its way into one or two country newspapers. I have been told, that it re- appeared, later, in better proportion, in the Metropolitan Press! Fortunately, or .unfortunately, very little of this account was true. It related, among other things, that I am accustomed to wear shoes with leaden soles to them to keep me from being blown away lilT that in an existence so passive riddles never came my way. As one morning I brushed past a bush of lads' love (or maidens' ruin, as some call it ), its fragrance sweeping me from top to toe, I stumbled on the carcass of a young mole. Curiosity vanquished the first gulp of horror. I folding my breath, with a stick I slowly edged it up in the dusl and surveyed the white heaving nest of maggots in its belly with a peculiar and absorbed recognition. "Ah. ha!" a voice cried within me. "so this is what is in wait ; this is how things are" ; and I stooped with lips drawn back over my teeth to examine the stinking mystery more closely. That was a lesson I have never unlearned. One of a rather different kind had another effect. I was sitting in the garden one day watching in the distance a jay huffling and sidling and preening its feathers on a bit of decrepit fencing. Suddenly there fell a sharp crack of sound. In a flash, with a derisive chattering, the jay was flown: and then I saw Adam Waggett, half doubled up, stealing along towards the place. I lay in wait for him. With catapult dangling in one hand, the other list tight shut, he came along like a thief. Ami I cried hollowly out of my concealment, "Adam, what have you there?" Such a picture of foolish shame T have never seen. lie was compelled none the less to exhibit his spoil, an eye-shut, tWinkle-tailed, needle-billed Jenny Wren crumpled up in his great, dirty paw. Fury burnt up in me like a fire. What I said to him I cannot remember, but it was nothing sweet: and it was a cowed Adam Waggetl that loafed off as truculently as he could towards the house, his catapult and victim left behind him. But that was his lesson rather than mine, and one which he never forgot. When in my serener moods Pollie's voice would be heard slyly hallooing for me, 1 would rouse up with a shock to realize again the little cell of my body into which I had been confined. 35 Memoirs of a Midget Then she and I would eat our luncheon, a few snippets of biscuit, a cherry or two, or slice of apple for me, and for her a hunch of bread and bacon about half my size in length and thickness. I would turn my back on her, for I could not endure to see her gobble her meal, having an abhorrence of cooked flesh, and a dainty stomach. Still, like most children I could be greedy, and curious of unfamiliar foods. To a few forbidden black currants which I reacjhed up and plucked from their rank- smelling bush, and devoured, skin and all, I owe lesson Num- ber 3. This one, however, had to be repeated. Childhood quickly fleets away. Those happy, unhappy, far- away days seem like mere glimpses of a dragon-fly shimmering and darting over my garden stream, though at the actual time they more closely resembled, perhaps, a continuous dream broken into bits of vivid awakening. As I grew older, my skirts grew longer, my desire for inde- pendence sharper, and my wits more inquiring. On my seven- teenth birthday I put up my hair, and was confirmed by a bishop whom my godmother persuaded to officiate in the house. It was a solemn occasion ; but my mother was a good deal con- cerned about the lunch, and I wdth the ballooning lawn sleeves and the two square episcopal finger-tips disposed upon my head. The experience cast a peaceful light into my mind and shook my heart, but it made me for a time a little self-conscious of both my virtue and my sins. I began to brood not only on the deplor- able state of my own soul, but also on Pollie's and Mrs Ballard's, and became for a time a diminutive Miss Fenne. I suppose inno- cence is a precarious bliss. On the other hand, if one's mind is like a dead mole's belly, it is wise, I think, to examine it closely but not too often, and to repeat that confirmation for one's self every morning and evening. As a young child I had been, of course, as naturally religious as a savage or an angel. But even then, I think, I never could quite believe that Paradise was a mere Fenne-land. Once I remember in the midst of my multiplication table I had broken out unannounced with, "Then God made the world, mamma ?" "Yes, my dear." "And all things in the forests and the birds in the sky and — 36 Memoirs of a Midget and moles, and this?" I held down my limp, coral-coloured arithmetic. "Yes," said she. I wondered a while, losing myself, as if in wanderings like Ariel's, between the clouds. "What, mamma, did lie make them of?" my voice interrupted me. "He made them," said my mother steadily, "of His Power and Love." Rapidly I slid back into her company. "And can we, can I, make things of my power and love?" "I suppose, my dear," replied my mother reflectively and perhaps thinking of my father in his study, over his Paper and Hops, "it is only that in life that is really worth doing." "Then," I said sagely, "I suspects that's how Mullings does the garden, mamma." Long befdre Miss Fenne''s and the bishop's visitation my mother had set about teaching me in earnest. A governess — a Miss Perry — was our first experiment. Alas, apart from her tendency to quinsy, it was I who was found wanting. She com- plained of the strain on her nerves. My mother feared that quinsy was catching ; and Miss Perry had no successor. Reading was always a difficulty. My father bought me as tiny old books as could be found, including a dwarf Bible, a midget Pickering Shakespeare, and a grammar (with a menagerie for frontispiece) from which I learned that "irony is a figure which intends the reverse of what it speaks, and under the masque of praise, con- ceals the most biting satyr" ; and the following stanza : — Hail Energeia! hail my native tongue Concisely full, and musically strong; Thou with the pencil hold'st a glorious strife. And paint'st the passions equal to the life. My mother agreed that strung would be preferable to "strong" and explained that "the passions" did not signify merely ill- temper; while, if I pecked over-nicely at my food, my father would cry "Hail Energeia!" a challenge which rarely failed to persuade me to set to. My grandfather sent me other pygmy books from Paris, in- cluding a minute masterpiece of calligraphy, Unc Antlwlogtc 37 Memoirs of a Midget dc Chansons pour une Minuscule Aimantc ct Bien-aimee par P. de R. These I could easily carry about with me. I soon learned to accustom my arms and shoulders to bulkier and more cumbrous volumes. My usual method with a common-sized book was to prop it up towards the middle of the table and then to seat myself at the edge. The page finished, I would walk across and turn over a fresh leaf. Thus in my solitude I studied my lessons and read again and again my nursery favourites, some of them, I gather, now undeservedly out of fashion. Perhaps even better than fiction or folk-tales, I liked books of knowledge. There were two of these in particular, The Observing Eye; or Lessons to Children on the Three Loxvest Divisions of Animal Life — The Radiated, Articulated, arid Molluscous, and The Child- hood of the World. Even at nine I remarked how nimbly the anonymous author of the former could skip from St Paul to the lobster; and I never wearied of brooding on Mr Clodd's frontis- piece. This depicts a large-headed and seemingly one-legged little girl in a flounced frock lying asleep under a wall on which ivy is sprawling. For pillow for herself and her staring doll there lies on the ground a full-sized human skull, and in the middle distance are seen the monoliths of Stonehenge. Beyond these gigantic stones, and behind the far mountains, rises with spiky rays an enormous Sun. / was that child ; and mine her sun that burned in heaven, and he a more obedient luminary than any lamp of man's. I would wonder what she would do when she awoke from sleep. The skull, in particular, both terrified and entranced me — the secret of all history seemed to lie hidden in the shadows beneath its dome. Indeed I needed no reminder from Mr Clodd that "Children (and some grown-up people too) are apt to think that things are wonder- ful only when they are big, which is not true." I knew already, out of nowhere, that "the bee's waxen cell is more curious than the chimpanzee's rough hut" (though I should have dearly liked to see the latter) ; and that "an ant is more wonderful than the huge and dull rhinoceros." Such is childish- ness, however: 1 pitied the poor rhinoceros his "dull." Over such small things as a nut, a shell, a drop of rain-water in a butter- cup, a frond of frost (for there' were cold winters at Lyndsey in those days), I would pore and pore, imbibing the lesson that the 38 Memoirs of a Midget eye alone if used in patience will tell its owner far more about an object than it ran merely si Among my few framed pictures 1 cannot resisl mentioning one by a painter of the name of Bosch. Below the middle of it kneeled naked Adam and Eve with exquisite crimped hair on their shoulders; and between them stood God. All above and beneath them, roamed the animals, birds, in ects, and infinitesimals of Eden, including a long-tailed monkey on an elephant, a jerboa, a dancing crocodile, and who bul our cal Miaou, carrying off a mouse! An astonishing, inexhaustible piece of thoughtfulne I loved Mynheer Bosch. Shameful dunce Miss M. may remain, but she did in her child- hood supremely enjoy any simple hook- about the things of creation greal or small. But I preferred my own notions of some of them. When my father of a dark, clear nighl would perch me Up at a window to see the stars — Charles's Wain and the Chair; ! told me that they were huge boiling suns, roaring their way through the vasl pi's n\ space, T would shake my head to myself. I was grateful for the science, hut preferred to keep them just ''stars.'' And though T loved to lave my hands in a trickle of light that had been numberless years on its journey to this earth, that of a candle also filled me with admiration, and T was un- nedlv grieved that the bleak moon was naught but a sheer hulk, sans even air or ice or rain or snow. How much pleasanter it would be to think that her shine was the reflection of our cherry orchards, and that her shadows were just Kentish hay-ricks, barns, and oast-houses. Tt was. too. perhaps rather tactless of my father to beguile me with full-grown authors' accounts of the Lives of the Little. Accomplished writers they may he. but — well, never mind. As for the Lives of the Great, I could easily adjust Monsieur Hon Papa's spyglass and re- duce them to scale. My father taught me also to swim in his round hath : and on a visit to Canterbury purchased for me the nimblest little dun Shetland pony, whom we called Mopsa. 1 learned to become a fearless rider. But hardy though her race may be, perhaps I was too light a burden to satisfy Mopsa's spirit. Tn a passing fit of temper she broke a leg. Though T had stopped my cars for an hour before the Vet came, T heard the shot. 39 Memoirs of a Midget My mother's lessons were never very burdensome. She taught me little, but she taught it well — even a morsel of Latin. I never wearied of the sweet oboe-like nasal sound of her French poems, and she instilled in me such a delight in words that to this day I firmly believe that things are at least twice the better and richer for being called by them. Apart from a kind of passionate impatience over what was alien to me — arithmetic, for instance, and "analysis" — and occasional fits of the sulks, which she allowed to deposit their own sediment at leisure, I was a willing, and, at times, even a greedy scholar. Apparently from infancy I was of a firm resolve to match my wits with those of the common-sized and to be "grown-up" some day. So much for my education, a thing which it seems to me is likely to continue — and specially in respect of human nature — as long as I keep alive. With so little childish company, without rivalry, I was inclined to swell myself out with conceit and complacency. "It's easy holding down the latchet when nobody pulls the string." But whatever size we may be, in soul or body, I have found that the world wields a sharp pin, and is pitiless to bubbles. Though inclined to be dreamy and idle when alone, I was, of course, my own teacher too. My senses were seven in number, however few my wits. In particular I loved to observe the clustering and gathering of plants, like families, each of a shape, size, and hue, each in their kind and season, though tall and lowly were intermingled. Now and then I would come on some small plant self-sown, shining and flourishing, free and clear, and even the lovelier for being alone in its kind amid its greater neigh- bours. I prized these discoveries, and if any one of them was dwarfed a little by its surroundings I would cosset it up and help it against them. How strange, thought I, if men so regarded each other's intelligence. If from pitying the dull-witted the sharp-witted slid to mere toleration, and from toleration to despising and loathing. What a contest would presently begin between the strong-bodied stupid and the feeble-bodied clever, and how soon there would be no strong-bodied stupid left in the world! They would dwindle away and disappear into Time like the mammoth and the woolly bear. And then I began to be sorry for the woolly bear and to wish I could go and have a look at him. Perhaps this is putting my old head on those 40 Memoirs of a Midget young shoulders, but when I strive to re-enter the thoughts of those remote days, how like they seem to the noisy wasting stream beside which they flowed on, and of whose source and des- tination I was unaware. All this egotism recalls a remark that Mrs Ballard once made apropos of some little smart repartee from Miss M. as she sat beside her pasteboard and slapped away at a lump of dough, "Well / know a young lady who's been talking to the young man that rubbed his face with a brass candlestick.'' 41 Chapter Four IN the midst of my eighteenth year fortune began to darken. My mother had told me little of the world, its chances and changes, cares and troubles. What I had learned of these came chiefly from books and my own speculations. We had few visitors and from all but the most familiar I was quickly packed away. My mother was sensitive of me, for both our sakes. But I think in this she was mistaken, for when my time came, Life found me raw, and it rubbed in the salt rather vigorously. My father had other views. He argued for facing the facts, though perhaps those relating to fruit and paper are not very intimidating. But he seldom made his way against my mother, except in matters that concerned his own comfort. He loved me fondly but throughout my childhood seems to have regarded me as a kind of animated marionette. When he came out from his Mills and Pockets it amused him to find me nibbling a rasp- berry beside his plate. He'd rub his round stubbly head, and say, "Well, mamma, and how's Trot done this morning?" or he would stoop and draw ever so needfully his left little finger down my nose to its uttermost tip, and whisper : "And so to Land's End, my love." Now and then I would find his eyes fixed on me as if in stupefaction that I was actually his daughter. But now that I was getting to be a young woman and had put up my hair, and the future frowned near, this domestic problem began seriously to concern him. My mother paled at the very mention of it. I remember I had climbed up on to his writing desk one morning, in search of a pair of high boots which I had taken off in his study the evening before. We had been fishing for sticklebacks. Concealed from view, while the wind whined at the window, T heard a quarrel between my father and mother about me which I will never repeat to mortal ear. It darkened my mind for days, and if . . . but better not. 42 Memoirs of a Midget At this time anxiety about money matters must have begun its gnawing in my poor father's brains. And I know what that means. He had recommended to others and speculated himself in some experiment in the cultivation of the trees from which the Chinese first made paper, and had not only been grossly cheated, but laughed at in the press. The Kentish Courier— I see his ears burning now — had referred to him as "the ingenious Mr Tapa" ; and my mother's commiseration had hardly solaced him: "But, my dear, you couldn't have gone to Canton by yourself. We must just draw in our horns a little." The ingenious Mr Tapa patted the hand on his shoulder, but his ears burned on. "Besides," my mother added, with a long, sighing breath, as she seated herself again, "there are the books." He plucked his spectacles off, and gazed vaguely in her direction: "Oh, yes, yes, there are the books." Nor was he long daunted by this attack. He fell in love with some notion of so pickling hop-poles that they would Inst for ever. Hut the press was no kinder to his poles than to his mulberries. And then befell the blackest misfortune of my life. I had been ill ; and for a few days had been sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms in a cot beside my mother, so that she should be near me if I needed her. This particular evening, however, I had gone back to my own room. We cannot change the past, or foresee the future. But if only Pollie had not been a heavy sleeper; if only I had escaped that trivial ailment — how tangled is life's skein! It was the May after my eighteenth birthday and full moonlight. Troubled in mind by my illness and other worries a,-nd mortifications, my mother, not fully aroused perhaps, got up in the small hours and mounted the stone staircase in order to look in on me. I was awake, and heard the rustling of her nightdress and the faint touch of her slippered feet ascending from stone to stone. I guessed her errand, and in my folly thought T would pretend to be asleep and give her a "surprise." I drew my curtains and lay motionless on my back as if T were dead. With eyes closed, listening, I smilingly waited. Then suddenly I heard a muffled, gasping cry : and all was 43 Memoirs of a Midget utterly, icily still. I flung aside the silk curtains and leapt out of bed. The moonlight was streaming in a lean ray across the floor of my room. I ran down this luminous pathway into the dusk at the open door. At the stair-head beyond, still and silent, I saw my poor dear. On through the cold dark air I ran, and stood in her loosened hair beside her head. It lay unstirring, her cheek colourless, her hand stretched out, palm upward, on the stone. I called into her ear, first gently and pleadingly, then loud and shrill. I ran and chafed her fingers, then back again, and stooped, listening with my cheek to her lips. She exhaled a trembling sigh. I called and called ; but my shrillness was utterly swallowed up in the vast night-hung house. Then softly in the silence her lids unsealed and her eyes, as if wonderful with a remote dream, looked up into my face. "My dear," she whispered, wake- fulness gathering faintly into her gaze, "my dear, is it you?" There was an accent in her voice that I had never heard before. Perhaps her tranceful eyes had magnified me. Then once more the lids closed down and I was alone. I fell on my knees beside her and crouched, praying into her heedless ear. It was my first acquaintance with calamity, and physically powerless to aid her, I could think of nothing for a moment but to persuade her to speak to me again. Then my senses returned to me. To descend that flight of stairs — down which hitherto I had always been carried — would waste more precious time than I could spare. There seemed to be but one alternative — to waken Pollie. I ran back into my bedroom and tugged violently at the slack of her bedclothes. A mouse might as well have striven to ring Great Paul. She breathed on with open mouth, flat on her back, like a log. Then a thought came to me. There was a brass-bound box under my bed, a full fifteen inches long, though shallow, in which my grandfather had lately sent me some gowns and finery from Paris. With some little difficulty I lugged and pushed this all across the room, and out on to the staircase. My strength seemed to be superhuman. One moment I flew to my mother, but now she lay in a pro- found sleep indeed, her cheek like marble. With a last effort I edged my box on its side between the balusters, and at some 44 Memoirs of a Midget risk of falling after it, shoved it over into the moon-silvered dusk below. The house echoed with its resounding brazen clatter as it pitched from stair to stair. Then quiet. Clutching with either hand the baluster I leaned over, listening. Then a voice cried sleepily: "Hah!" then a call, "Caroline!" and a moment afterwards 1 discerned my father ascending the staircase. . . . For weeks I lay desperately ill. The chill, the anguish, and horror of that night had come upon a frame already weakened. Life was nothing but an evil dream, a world of terrifying shadows and phantoms. But our old friend Dr Grose was familiar with my constitution, and at last I began to mend. Pollie, stricken with remorse, nursed me night and day, giving my small bed every hour she could spare in a house stricken and disordered. I was never told in so many words that my mother was dead. In my extreme weakness I learned it of the air around me, of every secret sound and movement in the house. Morning and evening appeared my father's great face in the doorway, his eyebrows lifted high above his spectacles. To see his misery I almost wished that I might die to spare him more. When Dr Grose gave him permission, he sat down beside my bed and stooping low, told me that my mother had remembered our last speech together on the staircase, and he gave me her last message. A thousand and one remembrances of her patience and impulsiveness, of our long hours of solitude together, of her fits of new life as if she were a tree blossoming in the Spring, of her voice, her dignified silence with Miss Fenne, her sallies with my grandfather, her absent musings — these all return to me. Alas, that it was never in my power, except perhaps at that last moment, to be to her a true comfort and companion, any- thing much better, in fact, than a familiar and tragic playmate. Worse beyond words ; how little I had done for her that I might have done ! But regret must not lead me into extremes. That is not the whole truth. There were occasions, I think, when she almost forgot my disabilities, when we were just two quiet, equal spirits in the world and conversed together gravely and simply, not as children, but as fellow-women. It is these T treasure dearest, while thanking her for all. Why, in the whirligig of time, if my authorities are trustworthy, and my life had fallen out 45 Memoirs of a Midget differently, the problem might now have been reversed ! I myself might have had natural-sized children and they a pygmy mother. The strangeness of the world. Out of the listlessness of convalescence my interests began to renew themselves. Across the gulf that separated us I could still commune with my mother's quiet spirit. Her peace and the peace of her forgiveness began to descend on me; and her grave in my imagination has now no more sorrow than the anticipation of my own. From my windowsill loggia I could command a full "Hundred" of Kent. Up there on the harrowed hill-top it was said that on fine days a keen eye could descry the sea to north and south ; though Dr Grose dismissed it as a piece of local presumption. Now that my mother was gone the clouds were stranger, the birds more sweetly melancholy, the flowers more fleeting. Something of youth had passed away to return no more. Half my thoughts were wasted in futile resentment at my incapacities. Yet it was a helplessness that in part was forced on me from without. Still less now could my father take me seriously. We shared our silent meals together. He would sit moping, pushing his hand over his whitening hair, or staring over his spectacles out of the window to the low whistling of some endless, monotonous tune that would haunt him for days to- gether and fret me to distraction. Now and again he would favour me with a serious speech, and then, with a glance, perhaps hurry away to his study before I could answer. To his half- completed dissertations on Hop, Cherry, and Paper, I learned he had added another, oh the Oyster. Many of his letters were now postmarked Whitstable. He even advertised in his old enemy, the Courier, for information : and would break out into furious abuse at the stupidity of his correspondents. Meanwhile his appetite increased ; he would nod in his chair ; his clothes grew shabby ; his appearance neglected. Poor dear, he missed my mother. P>ut I made a struggle to take her place. Every morning Pollie would carry me off to the kitchen for a discussion with Mrs Ballard over the household affairs of the day. Willi her fat, floury hand, she would hide her mouth and gravely nod her head at my instructions. P>ut I knew she was concealing her amuse- ment. "Oh, these men !" she once exclained at some new caprice 46 Memoirs of a Midget of "the master's," "they are never happy unless they can be where they bain't." With my own hand I printed out for her a list of my father's favourite dishes. I left off my black and wore bright colours again, so that he might not be constantly reminded of the past. But when after lung debate I took courage one day to propose myself as his housekeeper — I shall never forget the facial expression which he quickly rubbed off with his hand. He fetched out of his trousers pocket a great bunch of keys, and jangled them almost ferociously in the air at me for a full minute together with tears of amusement in his eyes. Then he tossed down the last gulp or two of his port and went off. A moment after he must have realized how cruel a blow he had dealt my vanity and my love. He returned, seated himself heavily in his chair, and looked at me. Then stretching out his hand he dropped his face on to his arm. A horrible quietness spread over the room. For the first time I looked with a kind of terror at the hairy fingers and whitening head, and could not stir. How oddly chance repeats itself. The door opened and once more, unannounced, Miss Fenne appeared in our midst. My father hastily rose to greet her, pretending that nothing was amiss. But when she held out her clawlike hand to me to be kissed, I merely stared at her. She screwed up her countenance into a smile: mumbled that I was looking pale and peaked again; and, with difficulty keeping her eyes from mine, explained that she had come for a business talk with my father. A few days afterwards I was standing up at the window of my mother's little sewing- room — always a favourite refuge of mine, for there the afternoon sun and the colours of evening used to beat into the corner. And I saw a small-sized woman with a large black bonnet come waddling up the drive. She was followed by a boy wheeling a square box on a two-wheeled trolley. It was Mrs Sheppey come to be housekeeper to the widower and his daughter. Mrs Sheppey proved to be a harassed and muddling woman, and she came to a harassed home. My father's affairs had gone from bad to worse. He was gloomy and morose. A hunted look sometimes gleamed in his eyes, and the spectacled nose seemed to grow the smaller the more solemn its surroundings were. He spent most of the day in his dressing-gown now, had quarrelled with Dr Grose, and dismissed Mrs Ballard. The 47 Memoirs of a Midget rooms were dirty and neglected. Pollie would maunder about with a broom, or stand idly staring out of the window. She was in love. At least, so I realize now. At the time I thought she was merely lumpish and stupid. Only once in my recollection did Mrs Sheppey pay my own quarters a visit. I was kneeling on my balcony and out of sight, and could watch her unseen. She stood there — tub-shaped, a knob of dingy hair sticking out from her head, her skirts sus- pended round her boots — passively examining my bed, my ward- robe, and my other belongings. Her scrutiny over, she threw up her hands and the whites of her eyes as if in expostulation to heaven, turned about in her cloth boots, and waddled out again. Pollie told me, poor thing, that her children had been thorns in her side. I brooded over this. Had I not myself, however involuntarily, been a thorn in my mother's side? 1 despised and yet pitied Mrs Sheppey. She was, if anything, frightened of me, and of my tongue, and would address me as ''little lady" in a cringing, pursed-up fashion. But I am thankful to say she never attempted to touch me or to lift me from the floor. Her memory is inextricably bound up with a brown, round pudding with a slimy treacle sauce which she used to send to table every Tuesday, Thurs- day, and Saturday. My father would look at it with his nose rather than with his eyes ; and after perhaps its fiftieth appearance, he summoned Mrs Sheppey with a violent tug at the bell. She thrust her head in at the door. "Take it away," he said, "take it away. Eat it. Devour it. Hide it from God's sight, good woman. Don't gibber. Take it away !" His tone frightened me out of my wits and Mrs Sheppey out of the house. Then came the end. At the beginning of August in my twentieth year, my father, who had daily become stranger in appearance and habits, though steadfastly refusing to call in his old friend, Dr Grose, was found dead in his bed. He was like a boy who never can quite succeed in pleasing himself or his masters. He had gone to bed and shut his eyes, never in this world to open them again. 48 Chapter Five AIM I sorry that almost beside myself with this new afflic- tion, and bewildered and frightened by the incessant coming and going of strangers in the house, I refused to be carried down to bid that unanswering face good-bye? No, I have no regret on that score. The older I grow the more closely I seem to understand him. If phantoms of memory have any reality — and it is wiser, I think, to remember the face of the living rather than the stony peace of the dead — he has not forgotten his only daughter. Double-minded creature I was and ever shall be ; now puffed up with arrogance at the differences between myself and gross, common-sized humanity; now stupidly sensitive to the pangs to which by reason of these differences I have to submit. At times I have been tempted to blame my parents for my short- comings. What wicked folly — they did not choose their only child. After all, too, fellow creatures of any size seem much alike. They rarely have nothing to blame Providence for — the length of their noses or the size of their feet, their bones or their corpulence, the imbecilities of their minds or their bodies, the "accidents" of birth, breeding, station, or circumstance. Yet how secure and perhaps wholesome is Man's self-satisfaction. To what ideal does he compare himself but to a self-perfected ab- straction of his own image? Even his Venus and Apollo are mere flattering reflections of his own he- or she-shapes. And what of his anthropomorphic soul? As for myself, Dame Nature may some day take a fancy to the dwarf. "What a pretty play it would be" — I have clean for- gotten where I chanced on this amusing passage — "What a pretty play it would be if, from the next generation onwards, the only humans born into the world should be of mere pygmy stature. Fifty years hence there would remain but few of the normal- sized in the land. Imagine these aged few, miserably stalking 49 Memoirs of a Midget through the dwarfed streets, picking up a scanty livelihood in city or country-side, where their very boots would be a public danger, their very tread would set the bells in the steeples ringing, and their appetites would be a national incubus. House, shop, church, high road, furniture, vehicles abandoned or sunken to the pygmy size; wars and ceremonies, ambitions and enterprises, everything but prayers, dwindled to the petty. Would great- grandfather be venerated, cherished, admired, a welcome guest, a lamented emigrant? Would there be as many mourners as sextons at his funeral, as many wreaths as congratulations at his grave?" And so on and so forth — like Jonathan Swift. But I must beware. Partly from fatigue and partly from dis- like of the version of Miss M. that stared qut of his picture at me, I had begun, I remember, to be a little fretful when old Mr Wagginhorne was painting my portrait. And I complained pertly that I thought there were far too many azaleas on the potted bush. "Ah, little Miss Finical," he said, "take care, if you please. Once there was a Diogenes whom the gods shut up in a tub and led on his own spleen. He died. . . . He died," he repeated, drawing his brush slowly along the canvas, "of dyspepsia." He popped round, "Think of that." I can think of that to better purpose now, and if there is one thing in the world whose company I shall deplore in my coffin, that thing is a Cynic. That is why I am trying as fast as I can to put down my experiences in black and white before the black predominates. But I must get back to my story. My poor father had left his affairs in the utmost disorder. His chief mourners were his creditors. Apart from these, one or two old country friends and distant relatives, I believe, attended his funeral, but none even of them can have been profoundly interested in the Hop, the Oyster, or the Cherry, at least in the abstract. Dr Grose, owing to ill-health, had given up his practice and was gone abroad. But though possibly inquiry was made after the small creature that had been left behind, I stubbornly shut myself away in my room under the roof, listening in a fever of apprehension to every sinister movement in the house beneath. Yet if a friend in need is a friend indeed, then I must confess that my treatment of Miss Fenne was the height of ingratitude. 50 Memoirs of a Midget In my grief and desolation, the future seemed to be only a veil be- yond the immediate present, which I had neither the wish nor the power to withdraw. Miss Fenne had no such illusions. I begged Pollie to make any excuse she could think of to prevent her from seeing me. But at last she pushed her way up, and doubt- less, the news and the advice she brought were the best tonic that could have been prescribed for me. As a child I had always associated my godmother with the crocodile (though not with Mr Bosch's charming conception of it, in his picture of the Creation). Yet there were no tears in her faded eyes when she explained that of my father's modest fortune not a pittance remained. In a few days the house, with everything in it except my own small sticks of furniture, was to be sold by auction. I must keep my door locked against in- truders. All that would be left to me was a small income of about £110 per annum, derived from money bequeathed to me by a relative of my mother's whom I had never seen. "I fancy your father knew nothing about it," she concluded, "at least so your dear mother seemed to imply. But there! it's a sad business, a sad business. And that Tapa scandal ; a lamentable affair." Having thus prepared the way, my god- mother proposed that I should take up my residence in her house, and commit my future entirely to her charge. "You cannot be an expensive guest," she explained, "and I am sure you will try to be a grateful one. No truly conscientious godparent, my dear child, ever relinquishes the soul committed to her care. I sometimes wonder whether your poor dear mother realized this." But it was my soul, if that is brother to the spirit and can be neighbour to pride, that revolted against her proposition. I had to shut my eyes at the very remembrance of Miss Fenne's prim and musty drawing-room. Every intimation, every jerk of her trembling head, every pounce of her jewelled fingers only hardened my heart. Poor Miss Fenne. Her resentment at my refusal seemed to increase her shortness of sight. Looking in on her from my balcony, I had the advantage of her, as she faced me in the full light in her chair, dressed up in her old lady's clothes like a kind of human Alp among my pygmy belongings. I tried to be polite, but this only increased her vexation. One smart tap of the ivory ball that topped her 51 Memoirs of a Midget umbrella would have been my coup de grace. She eyed me, but never administered it. At last she drew in her lips and fell silent. Then, as may happen at such moments, her ill-temper and chagrin, even the sense of her own dignity drooped away, and for a while in the quietness we were simply two ill-assorted human beings, helpless in the coils of circumstance. She composed her mouth, adjusted her bonnet strings, peered a moment from dim old eyes out of the window, then once more looked at me. "It must be, then, as God wills," she said in a trembling voice. "The spirit of your poor dear mother must be judge between us. She has, we may trust, gone to a better world." For a moment my resolution seemed to flow away like water, and I all but surrendered. But a rook cawed close overhead, and I bit my lip. Little more was said, except that she would consider it her duty to find me a comfortable and God-fearing home. But she admonished me of the future, warned me that the world was a network of temptations, and assured me of her prayers. So we parted. I bowed her out of my domain. It was the last time we met. Two days afterwards I received her promised letter: — "My Dear Godchild, — Mr Ambrose Pellew, an old clergyman friend of mine, in whose discretion and knowledge of the world I have every confidence, has spoken for you to an old married, re- spectable servant of his now living a few miles from London — a Mrs Bowater. For the charge of thirty shillings a week she has con- sented to give you board, lodging, and reasonable attendance. In all the circumstances this seems to me to be a moderate sum. Mr Pellew assures me that Mrs B. is clean, honest, and a practising Christian. When this dreadful Sale is over, I have arranged that Pollie shall conduct you safely to whati will in future be your home. I trust that you will be as happy there as Providence permits, though I cannot doubt that your poor dear mother and your poor father, too, for that matter, would have wished otherwise — that the roof of her old friend who was present at your Baptism and insisted on your Confirmation, should have been your refuge and asylum now that you are absolutely alone in the world. "However, you have rejected this proposal, and have chosen your own path. I am not your legal guardian, and I am too deeply pained to refer again to your obstinacy and ingratitude. Rest assured that, in spile of all, I shall remember you in my prayers, and I trust, D. V., 52 Memoirs of a Midget that you will escape the temptations of this wicked world — a world in which it has pleased God. in spite of :rificing and anxious friends, to place yon at so distressing a disadvantage. But in His Sight all men are equal. Let that he your continual consolation. Amos vii. 2; Prov. xxxi. 24-28; Eccles. xii. r. "I remain, your affectionate godmother. "Emma E. Fenne. "PS. — I reopen this letter to explain that your financial affairs are in the hands of Messrs Harris, Harris, and Harris, respectable solici- tors of Gray's Inn. They will remit you on every quarter day — Christmas Day, Lady Day, June 25th and September 29th — the sum of £28 10s. od. Of this you will pay £19 10s. at once to Mrs Bowater, who, I have no doubt, will advise you on the expenditure of what re- mains on wearing apparel, self-improvement, missions, charity, and so on. It grieves me that from the wreckage of your father's affairs you must not anticipate a further straw of assistance. All his money and property will be swallowed up in the dreadful storm that has broken over what we can only trust is a tranquil resting place. R. I. P.— E. E. F." So sprawling and straggling was my godmother's penman- ship that I spelled her letter out at last with a minifying glass, though rather for forlorn amusement's sake than by necessity. Not that this diminishment of her handwriting in any sense lessened the effect upon me of the sentiments it conveyed. They at once daunted me and gave me courage. For a little I hesitated, then at last I thought out in my heart that God might he kinder to me than Miss Fenne wished. Indeed I was so invigorated by the anticipation of the "wicked world," that I all but called her a crocodile to her phantasmal face. Couldn't 1 — didn't I — myself "mean well" too? What pictures and prospects of the future, of my journey, of Mrs Bowater and the "network" pursued each other through my brain. And what a darkness oppressed me when a voice kept repeating over in my mind — Harris and Harris and Harris, as if it were a refrain to one of my grandfather's chansons. Messrs Harris and Harris and Harris— I saw all three of them (dark men witli whiskers), but trusted profoundly they would never come to see me. Nor from that day to this, through all my giddying "ups" 53 Memoirs of a Midget and sobering "downs" have I ever for a moment regretted my decision — though I might have conveyed it with a little better grace. My body, perhaps also my soul, would have been safer in the seclusion of my godmother's house. But my spirit? I think it would have beaten itself to death there like a wasp on a window- pane. Whereas — well, here I am. 54 Chapter Six THOSE last few days of August dragged on — days of a burn- ing, windless heat. Yet, as days, I enjoyed them. ( )n sonic upper branch of my family tree must have flourished the salamander. Indeed 1 think I should have been a denizen of Venus rather than of this colder, darker planet. I sat on my bal- cony, hashing in the hot sunshine, my thoughts darting hither and thither like flies under a ceiling — those strange, winged creatures that ever seem to be attempting to trace out in their flittings the starry "Square of Pegasus." In spite of my troubles and fore- bodings, and fleeting panics, my inward mind was calm. I carefully packed away my few little valuables. The very notion of food gave me nausea, hut that I determined to conquer, since of course to become, at either extreme, a slave to one's stomach, is a folly. The noise and tramplings of the men in the rooms beneath never ceased, until Night brought quiet. The Sale lasted for two days. A stale and clouded air ascended even into my locked bedroom from the human beings (with their dust and tobacco and perfumes and natural presences) collected together in the heat of the great dining-room. A hum, a murmur, the scuffling of feet toiling downstairs with some heavy and cumbrous burden, the cries of the auctioneer, the coarse voices and laughter, the tinkle of glass — the stretching hours seemed endless; and every minute of them knelled the fate of some beloved and familiar object. I was glad my father couldn't hear the bidding, and sorry that perhaps he did not know that the most valuable of his curios — how valuable 1 was to learn later — was safely hidden away in an tipper room. So passed my birthday — the twentieth —nor tapped me on the shoulder with. "Ah. hut. my dear, just you wait till I come again!" None the less I thought a good deal about birthdays thai afternoon, and wondered how it was that we human beings can 55 Memoirs of a Midget bear even to go on living between two such mysteries as the be- ginning and the end of life. Where was my mother now? Where was I but two-and-twenty years ago? What was all this "Past," this "History," of which I had heard so much and knew so little? Just a story? Better brains than mine have puzzled over these questions, and perhaps if I had studied the phil- osophers I should know the answers. In the evenings, wrapped up in a shawl, Pollie carried me downstairs, and we took a sober whispering walk in the hush and perfumes of the deserted garden. Loud rang the tongues of the water over the stones. The moths were fluttering to their trysts, and from some dark little coign the cricket strummed me a solo. Standing up there in the starry night the great house looked down on me like an elder brother, mute but compassionate. By the second day after the conclusion of the Sale, the re- movers' vans and carts should have gutted the rooms and be gone. It had, therefore, been arranged that Pollie should as usual share my bedroom the last night, and that next day we should set off on our journey. After luncheon — the flavour of its sliced nectarine (or is it of one that came later?) is on my tongue at this moment — all the rest of the house being now hollow and vacant, Pollie put on her hat, thrust the large door key into her pocket, and went off to visit her mother in the village and to fetch a clean nightdress. She promised to return before dark. Her shoes clattered down the stone stairs, the outer door boomed like a gun. I spread out my hands in the air, and as if my four- poster could bear witness, cried softly, "I am alone." Marvel of marvels, even as I sit here to-day gazing at my inkpot, there in its original corner stands that same old four-poster. Pollie is living down in the village with her husband and her two babies ; and once more: I am alone. Is there anything in life so fas- cinating, so astonishing, as these queer, common little repetitions? Perhaps on the Last Day — but I anticipate. I read a little; wrote on the flyleaf of my diminutive Johnson, "September i si, Lyndsey for the last time. — M."; arranged my morrow's clothes on a chair, then sat down in my balcony to do nothing, to be nothing, merely to dream. But nature decreed otherwise. Soon after six by my grandfather's clock — it struck the hour out of its case, as if out of a sepulchre — a storm, which 56 Memoirs of a Midget all the afternon had been steadily piling its leaden vapours into space, began to break. Chizzel Hill with its prehistoric barrow was sunk to a green mound beneath those lowering cloudy heights, pooling so placid and lovely a blue between them. The very air seemed to thicken, and every tree stood up as if carved out of metal. Of a sudden a great wind, with heavy plashing drops of rain, swept roaring round the house, thick with dust and green leaves torn from the dishevelled summer trees. There was a hush. The darkness intensified, and then a vast sheet of lightning seemed to picture all Kent in my eyes, and the air was full of water. One glance into the obscure vacancy of the room behind me persuaded me to remain where I was, though the rain drove me further and further into the corner of my balcony. Cold, and a little scared by the glare and din, yet not unhappy, I cowered close up against the glass, and, shading my eyes as best I could from the flames of the lightning, I watched the storm. How long I sat there I cannot say. The clamour lulled and benumbed my brain into a kind of trance. My only company was a blackbird which had flown or been blown into my refuge, and with draggled feathers stared black-eyed out of the greenery at me. It was gathering towards dark when the rain and lightning began to abate, and the sullen thunder drew away into the distance, echoing hollowly along the furthest horizons. At last, with teeth chattering, and stiff to my bones, I made my way into the room again, and the benighted blackbird went squawking to his nest. Slipping off my gown and shoes, and huddling myself in the blankets and counterpane of my bed, I sat there pondering what next was to be done. It would soon be night ; and Pollie seemed unlikely to appear until all this turmoil was over. I was not only alone, but forsaken and infinitely solitary, a mere sentient living speck in the quiet: sen of light that washed ever and again into the gloomiest recesses of the room. And that familiar room itself seemed now almost as cold and inhospitable as a neglected church. I could hear the dark, vacant house beneath echoing and murmuring at every prolonged reverberation of thunder, and sighing through all its crannies and keyholes. My bedhangings softly shook in the air. Gone beyond recovery 57 Memoirs of a Midget were my father and mother : and I now realized how irrevocably. I was no longer a child; and the responsibilities of life were now wholly on my own shoulders. Yet I was not utterly forlorn. The great scene comforted me, and now and then I prayed, almost without thinking and without words, just as a little tune will keep recurring in the mind. And now, darkness being spread over the garden, in the east the moon was rising. Moreover, a curious sight met my eyes ; for as the storm settled, heavy rain in travelling showers was still occasionally skirting the house ; and when, between the heaped-up masses of cloud, the distant lightning gleamed a faint vaporous lilac, I saw motionless in the air, and as if suspended in their falling between earth and sky, the multi- tudinous glass-clear, pear-shaped drops of water. At sight of these jewels thus crystalling the dark air I was filled with such a rapture that I actually clapped my hands. And presently the moon herself appeared, as if to be my companion. Serene, remote, she glided at last from cover of an enormous bluff of cloud into the faint-starred vault of space, seemed to pause for an instant in contemplation of the dark scene, then went musing on her way. Beneath her silver all seemed at peace, and it was then that I fell asleep. And while I slept, I dreamed a dream. My dreams often commit me to a quiet and radiant life, as if of a reality less strange to me than that of waking. Others are a mere uneasiness and folly. In the old days I would sometimes tell my dreams to Airs Ballard; and she would look them up in a frowsy book she kept in the dresser drawer, a brown, grease-stained volume entitled Napoleon's Book of Fate. Then she would promise me a prince for a husband, or that I would be a great traveller across the sea, or that I must beware of a red-haired woman, and nonsense of that kind. But this particular dream remains more vividly in my memory than any. Well, I dreamed that I was walking in a strange garden — an orchard. And, as it seemed, I was either of the common human size, or this was a world wherein of human beings I was myself of the usual stature. The night was still, like the darkest picture, yet there must have been light there, since I could see as I walked. The grasses were coarse and deep, but they did not encumber my feet, and presently I found myself standing be- 58 Memoirs of a Midget neath a tree whose branches in their towering sombre heaviness seemed to be made of iron. Dangling here and there amid the pendulous leaves hung enormous fruits— pears stagnant and heavy as shaped lumps of lead or of stone. Why the sight of these fruits in the obscure luminosity of the air around them laid such a spell upon me, I cannot say. I stood there in the dew- cold grass, gazing up and up into those monstrous branches as if enchanted, and then of a sudden the ground under my feet seemed faintly to tremble as if at a muffled blow. One of the fruits in my dream, now come to ripeness, had fallen stone-like from above. Then again — thud! Realization of the dreadful danger in which I stood swept over me. I turned to escape, and awoke, shivering and in a suffocating heat, to discover in the moonlight that now Hooded my room where in actuality I was. Yet still, as it seemed, the dying rumour of the sound persisted, and surely, I thought, it must be poor, careless Pollie, her key forgotten, come back in the darkness after the storm, and ham- mering with the great knocker on the door below. Hardly a minute had passed indeed before the whole house resounded again with her thumping. One seldom finds Courage keeping tryst on the outskirts of sleep, and there was a vehemence in the knocking as if Pollie was in an extremity of fear at finding herself under the vacant house alone in the night. The thought of going to her rescue set my teeth chattering. I threw back the bedclothes and gazed at the moon, and the longer I sat there the more clearly I realized that I must somehow descend the stairs, convey to her that I was safe, and, if possible, let her in. Three steep stone flights separated us, stairs which 1 had very rarely ascended or descended except in her arms. I thrust my toot out; all was still; 1 must go at once. But what of light? The moon was on this side of the house. It might be pitch dark on the lower landings and in the hall. ( )n the stool by her bedside stood Pollie's copper candlestick, with an inch or two of candle in it and a box of matches. It was a thick-set tallow candle and none too convenient for me to grasp. With this alight in my hand, the stick being too cumbersome. I set out on my errand. The air was cool; the moon shone lustily. Just waked from sleep my mind was curiously exalted. I sallied out into the empty corridor. A pace or two beyond the threshold my heart seemed to swell up in my body, for it seemed that at the head of 59 Memoirs of a Midget the staircase lay stretched the still form of my mother as I had found her in the cold midnight hours long ago. It was but a play of light, a trick of fantasy. I recovered my breath and went on. To leap from stair to stair was far too formidable a means of progression. I should certainly have dashed out my brains. So 1 must sit, and jump sitting, manipulating my candle as best I could. In this sidling, undignified fashion, my eyes fixed only on the stair beneath me, I mastered the first flight, and paused to rest. What a medley of furtive sounds ascended to my ear from the desolate rooms below : the heavy plash of raindrop from the eaves, scurry and squeak of mouse, rustle of straw, a stirring — light as the settling of dust, crack of timber, an infinitely faint whisper ; and from without, the whistle of bat, the stony murmur of the garden stream, the hunting screech of some predatory night-fowl over the soaked and tranquil harvest fields. And who, Who? — that shape? ... I turned sharply, and the melted tallow of the guttering candle welled over and smartly burned the hand that held it. The pain gave me confidence. But better than that, a voice from below suddenly broke out, not Pollie's but Adam Waggett's, hollaing in the porch. Adam — the wren-slaughterer — prove me a coward? No, indeed. All misgiving gone, I girded my dressing-gown tighter around me, and continued the descent. It was a jolting and arduous business, and as I paused on the next landing, I now looked into the moon-bathed vacancy of my father's bedroom. Dismantled, littered with paper and the frag- ments of wood and glass of a picture my mother had given him, a great hole in the plaster, a broken chair straddling in the midst — a hideous spectacle it was. An immense moth with greenly glow- ing eyes, lured out of its roosting place, came fluttering round my candle, fanning my cheek with its plumy wings. I shaded the flame and smiled up at the creature which, not being of a kind that is bent on self-slaughter, presently wafted away. The lower I descended the filthier grew my journey. My stub of candle was fast wasting; and what use should I be to Pollie's messenger? When indeed in the muck and refuse left by the Sale, I reached the door, it was too late. He was now beating with his fists at the rear of the house ; and I must needs climb down the last flight of the back wooden staircase used by the servants. When at last 60 Memoirs of a Midget the -real stagnant kitchen came into view, it was my whole in- ward self that cried out in me. Its stone Hags were swarming with cockroaches. These shelled, nocturnal, sour-smelling creature-, are am the few insects that fill me with horror. By comparison the devil's coachman may he worse-tempered, but he is a gentleman. The very thought of one of them rearing itself against my slip- pered foot tilled me with disgust ; and the males were winged. They went scurrying away into hiding, infants seemingly to their mothers, whisper, whisper — I felt sick at the sight. There came a noise at the window. Peering from round my candle dame I perceived Adam's dusky face, with its long nose, staring in at me through the glass. At sight of the plight I was in, he hurst into a prolonged guffaw of laughter. This enraged me beyond measure. I stamped my foot, and at last he sobered down enough to yell through the glass that Pollie's mother had sent him to see that I was safe and had forgotten to give him the house-key. Pollie herself would be with me next morning. I waved my candle at him in token that I understood. At this the melted grease once more trickled over and ran scalding up my arm. The candle fell to the floor, went out ; the pale moon- shine spread through the air. I could see Adam's conical head outlined against the soft light of the sky; though he could no longer see me. Horror of the cockroaches returned on me. In- stantly I turned tail, leaving the lump of tallow for their spoil. How, in that dark, high house, I managed to remount those stairs, I cannot conceive. Youth and persistency, I suppose. I doubt if I could do it now. Utterly exhausted and bedraggled 1 regained my bedroom at last without further misadventure. I sponged the smoke and grime from face and hands in my wash- bowl, hung my dressing-gown where the morning air might re- fresh it, and was soon in a dead sleep, from which I think even the Angel Gabriel would have failed to arouse me. 61 Chapter Seven WHEN I awoke, the morning sky was gay with sunshine, there was a lisping and gurgling of starlings on the roof, the roar of the little river in flood after the rains shook the air at my window, and there sat Pollie, in her outdoor clothes, the rest of the packing done and she awaiting breakfast. Unstir- ringly from my pillow I scrutinized the plump, red-cheeked face with its pale-blue prominent eyes dreaming out of the window; and sorrow welled up in me at the thought of the past and of how near drew our separation. She heard me move, and kneeling and stooping low over my bed, with her work-roughened finger she stroked the hand that lay on my coverlet. A pretty sight I must have looked — after my night's experiences. We whispered a little together. She was now a sedater young woman, but still my Pollie of the apples and novelettes. And whether or not it is be- cause early custom is second nature, she is still the only person whom my skin does not a little creep against when necessity calls for a beast of burden. Her desertion of me the night before had been caused by the untimely death of one of her father's three Alderney cows — a mild, horned creature, which I had myself oiten seen in the mead- ows cropping among the buttercups, and whose rich-breathed nose I had once had the courage to ask to stroke with my hand. This ill-fated beast at first threat of the storm, had taken shelter with her companions under an oak. Scarcely had the lightnings begun to play when she was struck down by a ''thunderbolt." It was a tragedy after Pollie's heart. She had (she said) fainted dead ofif at news of it — and we bemoaned the event in concert. In re- turn I told her my dream of the garden. Nothing would then content her but she must fetch from under her mattress Napo- leons Book of Fate, a legacy from Mrs Ballard. "But, Pollie," I demurred; "a dream is only a dream." "Honest, miss," she replied, thumbing over the pages, ''there's 62 Memoirs of a Midget some of 'em means what happens and comes true, and they'll tell secrets too if they be searched about. More'n a month before .Mrs Ballard fell out with master she dreamed that one of the speckled hens had laid an egg in the kitchen dresser. There it was clucking among the crockery. And to dream of eggs, the book says, is to be certain sure of getting the place you are after, and which she wrote off to a friend in London and is there now!" What more was there to say? So presently Pollie succeeded in turning to "Pears" in the grease-grimed book, and spelled out slowly : — "Peaks. — To dream of pears is in-di-ca-tive of great wealth (which means riches, miss) ; and that you will rise to a much higher spear than the one you at present occupy. To a woman they denote that >hc will marry a person far above her in rank (lords and such- like, miss, if you please), and that she will live in great state. To persons in trade they denote success and future prosperity and deviation. They also indi- indicate constancy in love and happiness in the marriage state." Her red cheeks grew redder with this exertion of scholarship, and I burst out laughing. "Ah, miss," she cried in confusion, "laugh you may, and that's what Sarah said to the Angel. But mark my words if something of it don't hap out like what the book says." "Then, Pollie," said I, "there's nothing for it but to open a butcher's shop. For live in great state 1 can't and won't, not if the Prince of Wales himself was to ask me in marriage." "Lor, miss," retorted Pollie in shocked accents, "and him a married man with grown-up sons and all." Hut she forgave me my mockery. As for the Dream Book, doubtless young Bonaparte must often have dreamed of Pears in Corsica ; and no less indubi- tably have 1 lived in "great state" — though without much devi- ation. Put the day was hasting on. My toilet must be made, and the preparations for our journey completed. Now that the dawn of my new fortunes was risen, expectancy filled my mind, and the rain-freshened skies and leaves of the morning renewed my spirits. Our train — the first in my experience — was timed to leave our country railway station at 3.3 p.m. By one o'clock, all the personal luggage that I was to take with me had been sewn 63 Memoirs of a Midget up in a square of canvas, and corded. The rest of my belongings — my four-poster, etc. — were to be stowed in a large packing-case and sent after me. First impressions endure. No great store of sagacity was needed to tell me that. So I had chosen my clothes carefully, determined to show my landlady that I meant to have my own way and not be trifled with. My dear Mrs Bowater ! — she would be amused to hear that. Pollie bustled downstairs. I stood in the midst of the sunlit, dismantled room, light and shadow at play upon ceiling and walls, the sun-pierced air a silvery haze of dust. A host of memories and thoughts, like a procession in a dream, traversed my mind. A strangeness, too — as if even this novel experience of farewell was a vague recollection beyond defined recall. Pollie returned with the new hat in the paper bag in which she had brought it from home : and I was her looking-glass when she had put it on. Then from top to basement she carried me through every room in the house, and there on the kitchen floor, mute witness of the past, lay the beetle-gnawn remnant of my candle-stub. We wandered through the garden, glinting green in the cool flocking sunbeams after the rain ; and already vaunting its escape from Man. Pollie was re- turning to Lyndsey — I not ! My heart was too full to let me linger by the water. I gazed at the stones and the wild flowers in a sor- rowful hunger of farewell. Trifles, soon to be dying, how lovely they were. The thought of it swallowed me up. What was the future but an emptiness ? Would that I might vanish away and be but a portion of the sweetness of the morning. Even Pollie's im- perturbable face wore the appearance of make-believe ; for an in- stant I surprised the whole image of me reflected in her round blue eye. The Waggetts' wagonette was at the door, but not — and I was thankful — not my Adam, but the old Adam, his father. My luggage was pushed under the seat. I was set up, to be screened as far as possible from the wind, beside Pollie and behind Mr Waggett — no stranger to me with his neat, dark whiskers, for in the old days, al dinner parties, he would wait at table. I see him now — as gentlemanlike as a Devil's Coachhorse — entering the kitchen with his little black bag. Only once I swiftly turned my head over my shoulder toward the house. Then we were outside the iron gates, and bumping along through the puddles between the bowery hedges towards the station. 64 Memoirs of a Midget I thought of my father and mother lying side by side, beyond the sullen drift of nettles, under the churchyard wall. Miss Fenne had taken me there many weeks before in her faded barouche with the gaunt white mare. Not a word had I breathed to her of my anguish at sight of the churchyard. The whole afternoon was a nightmare. She regaled the journey with sentiments on death and the grave. Throughout it, I was in danger of slipping out of her sight; for the huttons on the sage-green leather seat were not only a discomfort but had failed to aid me to sit upright ; and nothing would have induced me to catch at the trimmings of her dolman to save myself from actually falling off into the pit of her carriage. There sat her ancient coachman ; clutter-clutter plodded the hoofs; what a monstrous, monstrous world — and she cackling on and on — like a hen over its egg. But now the novelty of this present experience, the flowery cottages, Mr Waggett's square, sorrel nag, the ballooning north- westerly clouds, the aromatic rusty hedgerows, the rooks in the cornfields — all these sights and sounds called joy into my mind. and far too soon the bright-painted railway station at the hill- bottom hove into sight, and our drive was over. 1 was lifted down into Pollie's arms again. Then followed a foolish chaffer- ing over the tickets, which Mr Waggett had volunteered to pur- chase for us at the rounded window. The looming face beyond had caught sight of me, and the last word- 1 heard bawled through for any to hear were: "Lor, Mr Waggett, I'd make it a quarter for 'ee if it was within regulations. But 'tain't so. the young Lady's full natural size in the eye of the law, and I couldn't give in to 'ee not even if 'twas a honeymooning you was after." No doubt it was wholesome to learn as quickly as p»ssihle how easy a butt I was to be for the jests of the good-humoured. On that occasion it was a bitter pill. I felt even Pollie choke down a laugh into her bosom. My cheek whitened, hut I said nothing'. An enormous din at the moment shattered around me. ten thou- sand times harsher to my nerves than any mere witticism could be. My first "steam-monster" was entering the station. All but stunned by its clatter, I barely had the presence of mind to thank- Mr Waggett for the little straw basket of three greengages, and the nosegay of cherry-pie which he had thrust into my arms. My canvas-wrapped package was pushed in under the seat, the door 65 Memoirs of a Midget was slammed to, the guard waved his green flag, Mr Waggett touched his hat: and our journey was begun. Fortunately Pollie and I found ourselves in an empty carriage. The scream of the whistle, the grinding jar of the wheels, the op- pressive odour of Mr Waggett's bouquet — I leaned back on her to recover my wits. But the cool air blowing in on my face and a far-away sniff from a little glass bottle with which her mother had fortified her for the journey, quickly revived me, and I was free to enjoy the novelties of steam-travel. My eyes dizzied at the wide revolving scene that was now spread out beneath the feathery vapours. How strange it was to see the green country world — meadow and stream and wooded hill — thus wheel softly by. If Pollie and I could have shared it alone, it would have been among my pleasantest memories. But at the next stopping places other passengers climbed into the carriage ; and five complete strangers soon shared the grained wood box in which we were enclosed. There was a lady in black, with her hair smoothed up under her bonnet, and a long pale nose ; and up against her sat her little boy, a fine fair, staring child of about five years of age. A black-clothed, fat little man with a rusty leather bag, over the lock of which he kept clasped his finger and thumb, quietly seated himself. He cast but one dark glance about him and immediately shut his eyes. In the corner was an older man with a beard under his chin, gaiters, and a hard, wide- brimmed hat. Besides these, there was a fat countrywoman on the same side as Pollie and I, whom I could hear breathing and could not see, and a dried-up, bird-eyed woman opposite in a check shawl, with heavy metal ear-rings dangling at her ears. She sat staring blankly and bleakly at things close as if they were at a distance. My spirit drank in this company. So rapt was I that I might have been a stock of wood. Gathered together in this small space they had the appearance of animals, and, if they had not been hu- man, what very alarming ones. As long as I merely sat and watched their habits I remained unnoticed. But the afternoon sun streamed hot on roof and windows : and the confined air was soon so dense with a variety of odours, that once more my brain dizzied, and I must clutch at Pollie's ami for support. At this movement the little boy, who had more than once furtively glanced at me, 66 Memoirs of a Midget crouched wriggling back against his mother, and, edging his face aside, piped up into her ear, "Mamma, is that alive?" The train now stood motionless, a fine array of hollyhocks and sunflowers Bared beyond the window, and his voice rang out shrill as a bird in the quiet of afternoon. Tiny points of heat broke out all over me, as one by one my fellow passengers turned their aston- ished faces in my direction. Even the man with the leather bag heard the question. The small, bead-brown eyes wheeled from under their white lids and fixed me with their stare. "Hush, my dear," said the lady, no less intent but less open in her survey ; "hush, look at the pretty cows !" "But she is, mamma. It moved. I saw that move," he assever- ated, looking along cornerwise at me out of his uptilted face. Those blue eyes! a mingling of delight, horror, incredulity, even greed swam in their shallow deeps. I stood leaning close to Pollie's bosom, breathless and helpless, a fascinating object, no doubt. Never before had I been transfixed like this in one con- gregated stare. I felt myself gasp like a fish. It was the old farmer in the corner who at last came to my rescue. "Ali.e! / warrant. Eh, ma'am?" he appealed to poor Pollie. "And an uncommon neat-fashioned young lady, too. Off to Whipham Fair, I'll be bound." The bag-man turned with a creeping grin on his tallowy features and muttered some inaudible jest out of the corner of his mouth to the gipsy. She eyed him fiercely, drawing her lips from her bright teeth in a grimace more of contempt than laugh- ter. Once more the engine hooted and we glided on our way. "I want that, mamma," whispered the child. "I want thai, dear little lady. Give that teeny tiny lady a biscuit." At this new sally universal merriment filled the carriage. We were jogging along in fine style. This, then, was Miss Fenne's "network." A helpless misery and bitterness swept through me, the heavy air swirled ; and then — whence, from whom, I know not — self-possession returned to me. Why, I had chosen my fate: I must hold my own. My young admirer, much against his mother's inclination, had managed to fetch out a biscuit from her reticule — a star-shaped thing, graced with a cone of rose-tinted sugar. Still crouching back like a chick under her wing, he stretched his bribe out at 67 Memoirs of a Midget arm's length towards me, in a pink, sweat-sparked hand. All this while Pollie had sat like a lump beside me, clutching her basket, a vacant, flushed smile on her round face. I drew myself up, and supporting myself by her wicker basket, advanced with all the dignity at my command to the peak of her knees, and, stretching out my hand in return, accepted the gift. I even managed to make him an indulgent little bow, feigned a nibble at the lump of food, then planted it on the dusty ledge beneath the carriage window. A peculiar silence followed. With a long sigh the child hid his face in his mother's sleeve. She drew him closer and smiled care- fully into nothingness. "There," she murmured, "now mother's treasure must sit still and be a good boy. I can't think why papa didn't take — second-class tickets." "But nor did that kind little lady's papa," returned the child stoutly. The kindly old farmer continued to gloat on me, gnarled hands on knees. But I could not bear it. I quietly surveyed him until he was compelled to rub his face with his fingers, and so cover its retreat to his own window. The gipsy woman kept her ferocious, birdlike stare on me, with an occasional stealthy glance at Pollie. The bag-man's lids closed down. For the rest of the journey — though passengers came and went — I kept well back, and was left in peace. It was my first real taste of the world's curiosity, mock- ery, aversion, and flattery. One practical lesson it taught me. From that day forward I never set out on any such journey unless thickly veiled. For then, though the inquisitive may see me, they cannot tell whether or not I see them, or what my feelings may be. It is a real comfort ; though, from what I have read, it appears to be the condition rather of a ghost than of a normal young lady. But now the sun had begun to descend and the rays of evening to stain the fields. We loitered on from station to station. To my relief Pollie had at last munched her way through the pasties and sweetmeats stowed in her basket. My nosegay of cherry-pie was fainting for want of water. In heavy sleep the bag-man and gipsy sat woodenly nodding and jerking side by side. The lady had delicately composed her face and shut her eyes. The little boy slumbered serenely with his small red mouth wide open. Languid and heavy, I dared not relax my vigilance. But in the desolation that gathered over me I almost forgot my human com- pany, and returned to the empty house which seemingly I had left 68 " Memoirs of a Midget for ever- the shadows of yet another nightfall already lengthen- ing over its flowers and sward. Could I not hear the silken rustle of the evening primrose un- folding her petals? Soon the cool dews would he falling on the stones where I was wont to sit in reverie heside the flowing water. It seemed indeed that my self had slipped from my body, and hov- ered entranced amid the thousand jargonings of its tangled lulla- by. Was there, in truth, a wraith in me that could so steal out; and were the invisible inhabitants in their fortresses beside my stream conscious of its presence among them, and as happy in my spectral company as I in theirs? I floated up out of these ruminations to find that my young pasha had softly awakened and was gazing at me in utter incredulity from sleep-gilded eyes. We exchanged a still, protracted, dwell- ing smile, and for the only time in my life I actually saw a fellow- creature fall in love ! "Oh, but mamma, mamma, I do beseech you," he called up at her from the platform where he was taking his last look at me through the dingy oblong window, "please, please, I want her for mine ; I want her for mine !" I held up his biscuit in my hand, laughing and nodding. The whistle knelled, our narrow box drew slowly out of the station. As if heartbroken, he took his last look at me, petulantly flinging aside his mother's hand. He had lost me for ever, and Pollie and I were alone again. 69 Beechwood Chapter Eight STILL the slow train bumped on, loath to drag itself away from the happy harvest fields. Darkness was near when we ourselves alighted at our destination, mounted into a four-wheeled cab, and once more were in motion in the rain- laid dust. On and on rolled Pollie and I and our luggage together, in such ease and concealment after the hard wooden seats and garish light that our journey began to seem — as indeed I wished for the moment it might prove — interminable. One after another the high street lamps approached, flung their radiance into our musty velvet cabin, and went gliding by. Ever and again the luminous square of a window beyond the outspread branches of a tree would float on. Then suddenly our narrow solitude was invaded by the bright continuous flare thing into it from a row of shops. Never before had I been out after nightfall. I gazed en- thralled at the splendours of fruit and cakes, silks and sweetmeats packed high behind the glass fronts. Wasn't I myself the heiress of ino a year? Indeed I was drinking in Romance, .and never traveller surveyed golden Moscow or the steeps of Tibet with 'keener relish than I the liquid amber, ruby, and em- erald that summoned its customers to a wayside chemist's shop. Twenty — what a child I was ! I smile now at these recollections with an indulgence not unmixed with envy. It is Moscow sur- vives, not the artless traveller. After climbing a long hill — the wayside houses steadily thin- ning out as we ascended — the cab came to a standstill. The immense, shapeless old man who had so miraculously found our way for us, and who on this mild August evening was muffled up to his eyes in a thick ulster, climbed down back- wards from his box and opened the door. At the same moment, as if by clockwork, opened another door — that of the last house on the hill. I was peering out of the cab, then, at my home; 73 Memoirs of a Midget and framed in that lighted oblong stood Mrs Bowater. All utterly different from what I had foreseen : this much smaller house, this much taller landlady, and — dear me, how fondly I had trusted that she would not for the first time set eyes on her lodger being carried into her house. I had in fancy pictured myself bowing a composed and impressive greeting to her from her own hearthrug. But it was not to be. Pollie lifted me out, settled me on her arm, and my feet did not touch terra firma again until she had ascended the five stone steps and we were within the passage. "Lor, miss ; then here we are," she sighed breathlessly, then returned to the cabman to pay him his fare. Even dwarfed a little perhaps by my mourning, there I stood, breathed upon by the warm air of the house, in the midst of a prickly door- mat, on the edge of the shiny patterned oilcloth that glossed away into the obscurity from under the gaslight in front of me ; and there stood my future landlady. For the first time, with head thrown back, I scanned a countenance that was soon to become so familiar and so endeared. Mrs Bowater"s was a stiff and angular figure. She, too, was in black, with a long, springside boot. The bony hands hung down in their peculiar fashion from her elbows. A large cameo brooch adorned the flat chest. A scanty velvet patch of cap failed to conceal the thin hair sleekly parted in the middle over the high narrow temples. The long dark face with its black, set eyes, was almost without expression, except that of a placid severity. She gazed down at me, as I up at her, steadily, silently. "So this is the young lady," she mused at last, as if addressing a hidden and distant listener. "I hope you are not over-fatigued by your journey, miss. Please to step in." To my ear, Mrs Bowater's was what I should describe as a low, roaring voice, like falling water out of a black cloven rock in a hill-side; but what a balm was its sound in my ear, and how solacing this dignified address to jaded nerves still smarting a little after my victory on the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway. Making my way around a grandfather's clock that ticked hollowly beside the door, I followed her into a room on the left of the passage, from either wall of which a 74 Memoirs of a Midget pair of enormous antlers threatened each other under the dis- coloured ceiling. For a moment the glare within and the vista of furniture legs confused my eyes. But Mrs Bowater came to my rescue. "Food was never mentioned," she remarked reflectively, "being as I see nothing to be considered except as food so-called. But you will find everything clean and comfortable; and 1 am sure, miss, what with your sad bereavements and all, as I have heard from Mr Pellew, I hope it will be a home to you. There being nothing else as I suppose that we may expect." My mind ran about in a hasty attempt to explore these sentiments. They soothed away many misgivings, though it was clear that Mrs Bowater's lodger was even less in dimensions than Mrs Howater had supposed. Clean: after so many months of Mrs Sheppey's habits, it was this word that sang in my head. Wood, glass, metal flattered the light of gas and coal, and for the first time I heard my own voice float up into my new "apart- ment" : "It looks very comfortable, thank you, Mrs Bowater; and I am quite sure I shall be happy in my new abode." There w.is nothing intentionally affected in this formal little speech. "Which being so," replied Mrs Bowater, "there seems to be trouble with the cabman, and the day's drawing in, perhaps you will take a seat by the fire." A stool nicely to my height stood by the steel fender, the flames played in the chimney; and for a moment I was left alone. "Thank God," said I, and took off my hat, and pushed back my hair. . . . Alone. Only for a moment, though. Its mistress gone, as fine a black cat as ever I have seen appeared in the doorway and stood, green-eyed, regarding me. To judge from its countenance, this must have been a remarkable experience. I cried seductively, "Puss." But with a blink of one eye and a shake of its forepaw, as if inadvertently it had trodden in water, it turned itself about again and disappeared. In spite of all my cajoleries, Henry and I were never to be friends. Whatever Pollie's trouble with the cabman may have been, Mrs Bowater made short work of it. Pollie was shown to the room in which she was to sleep that night. I took off my bodice and bathed face, hands, and arms to the elbow in the shallow 75 Memoirs of a Midget bowl Mrs Bowater had provided for me. And soon, wonderfully refreshed and talkative, Pollie and I were seated over the last meal we were to share together for many a long day. There were snippets of bread and butter for me, a little omelette, two sizes too large, a sugared cherry or two sprinkled with "hundreds and thousands," and a gay little bumper of milk gilded with the enwreathed letters, "A Present from Dover." Alack-a-day for that omelette ! I must have kept a whole family of bantams steadily engaged for weeks together. But I was often at my wits' end to dispose of their produce. Fortunately Mrs Bowater kept merry fires burning in the evening — "Ladies of some sizes can't warm the air as much as most," as she put it. So at some little risk to myself among the steel fire-irons, the boiled became the roast. At last I made a clean breast of my horror of eggs, and since by that time my landlady and I were the best of friends, no harm came of it. She merely bestowed on me a grim smile of unadulterated amusement, and the bantams patronized some less fastidious stomach. My landlady was a heavy thinker, and not a copious — though a leisurely — talker. Minutes would pass, while with dish or duster in hand she pondered a speech ; then perhaps her long thin lips would only shut a little tighter, or a slow, convulsive rub of her lean forefinger along the side of her nose would indicate the upshot. But I soon learned to interpret these mute signs. She was a woman who disapproved of most things, for excellent, if nebulous, reasons; and her silences were due not to the fact that she had nothing to say, but too much. Pollie and I talked long and earnestly that first evening at Beechwood. She promised to write to me, to send me all the gossip of the village, and to come and see me when she could. The next morning, after a sorrowful breakfast, we parted. Standing on the table in the parlour window, with eyes a little wilder than usual, I watched her pass out of sight. A last wave of her handkerchief, and the plump-cheeked, fair-skinned face was gone. The strangeness and solitude of my situation flooded over me. For a few days, strive as she might, Mrs Bowater's lodger moped. It was not merely that she had become more helpless, but of far less importance. This may, in part, be accounted for by the fact that, having been accustomed at Lyndsey to 76 Memoirs of a Midget live at the top of a high house and to look dihle ignored my exis- tence. "Simple victuals, by all means, miss," Mrs Howater would admit. "But if it don't enjoy, the inside languishes; and you are not yet of an age that can fall hack on skin and bone." The question of food presently introduced that of money. She insisted on reducing her charges to twenty shillings a week. "There's the lodging, and there's the hoard, tin- last being as you might say all hut unmentionable; and honesty the best policy though I have never tried the reverse." So. in spite of all my protestations, it was agreed. And 1 thus found myself 79 Memoirs of a Midget mistress of a round fifty-eight pounds a year over and above what I paid to Mrs Bowater. Messrs Harris, Harris, and Harris were punctual as quarter-day : and so was I. I "at once" paid over to my landlady £13 and whatever other sum was needful. The "charity" my godmother had recommended began, and, alas, remained at home. I stowed the rest under lock and key in one of my grandfather's boxes which I kept under my bed. This was an imprudent habit, perhaps. Mrs Bowater advocated the Penny Bank. But the thought of my money being so handy and palpable reassured me. I would count it over in my mind, as if it were a means to salvation; and became, in consequence, near and parsimonious. Occasionally when she had "business" to transact, Mrs Bowater would be off to London. There she would purchase for me any little trifle required for the replenishment of my wardrobe. Needing so little, I could afford the finest materials ; my sovereign was worth at least sixty shillings. Rather than "fine," Mrs Bowater preferred things "good"; and for this "goodness," I must confess, she sometimes made rather alarming sacrifices of appearance. Still, I was already possessed of a serviceable stock of clothes, and by aid of one of my dear mother's last presents to me, a shiny Swiss miniature workbox with an inlaid picture of the Lake of Geneva on the lid, I soon became a passable needlewoman. I love bright, pure colours, and, my sweeping and dusting and bedmaking over, and my external mourning for my father at an end, a remarkably festive figure would confront me in my cheval glass of an afternoon. The hours I spent in dressing my hair and matching this bit of colour with that. I would talk- to myself in the glass, too, for company's sake, and make believe I was a dozen different characters. I was young. I pined for life and companionship, and having only my own — for Mrs Bowater was rather a faithful feature of the landscape than a fellow being— I made as much, and as many, of myself as possible. Another question that deeply engaged my landlady was my health. She mistrusted open windows, but strongly recommended "air." What insidious maladies she spied around me! Indeed that September was unusually hot. I sat on my table in the 80 Memoirs of a Midget window like a cricket in an oven, sorely missing my high open balcony, the garden, and the stream. Once and again Mrs Bowater would take me for a little walk after sunset. Discretion to her was much the better part of valour; nor had I quite recovered from my experiences in the train. But such walks — though solitary enough at that hour of the day — were straggly and irksome. Pollie's arm had been a kind of second nature to me; but Mrs Bowater, I think, had almost as fastidious a disinclination to carrying me as I have to being carried. I languished for liberty. Being a light sleeper, I would often awake at daybreak and the first call of the birds. Then the hill — which led to Tyddlesdon End and Love (or Loose) Lane — was deserted. Thought of the beyond haunted me like a passion. At a convenient moment I intimated to Mrs Bowater how secure was the street at this early hour, how fresh the meadows, and how thirsty for independent outings her lodger. "Besides, Mrs Bowater, I am not a child, and who could see me?" After anxious and arduous discussion, Mr Bates was once more consulted. He wrapped himself in a veritable blanket of reflection, and all but became unconscious before he proposed a most ingenious device. With Mrs Bowater's consent, she being her own landlady and amused at the idea, he cut out of one of the lower panels of her parlour door a round-headed opening just of an easy size to suit me. In this aperture he hung a delicious little door that precisely fitted it. So also with the door into the street — to which he added a Brahmah lock. By cementing a small square stone into the corner of each of the steps down from the porch, he eased that little difficulty. May Heaven bless Mr Bates! With his key round my neck, stoop once, stoop twice, a scamper down his steps, and I was free — as completely mistress of my goings-out and of my comings-in as every self-respecting person should be. "That's what my father would have called a good job, Mr Bates," said I cordially. He looked yearningly at me, as if about to impart a profound secret; but thought better of it. "Well, miss, what I say is, a job's a job; and if it is a job, it's a job that should be made a job of." 81 Memoirs of a Midget As I dot the i's and cross the t's of this manuscript, I often think — a little ruefully — of Mr Bates. As soon as daybreak was piercing into my region of the sky, and before Mrs Bowater or the rest of the world was stirring, I would rise, make my candlelit toilet, and hasten out into the forsaken sweet of the morning. If it broke wet or windy, I could turn over and go to sleep again. A few hundred yards up the hill, the road turned off, as I have said, towards Tyddlesdon End and Loose Lane — very stony and steep. On the left, and before the fork, a wicket gate led into the woods and the park of empty "Wanderslore." To the verge of these deserted woods made a comfortable walk for me. If, as might happen, any other wayfarer was early abroad, I could conceal myself in the tussocks of grass and bushes that bordered the path. In my thick veil, with my stout green parasol and inconspicuous shawl, I made a queer and surprising figure no doubt. Indeed, from what I have heard, the ill fame of Wanderslore acquired a still more piquant flavour in the town by reports that elf-folk had been descried on its outskirts. But if I sometimes skipped and capered in these early outings, it was for exercise as well as suppressed high spirits. To be prepared, too, for the want of such facilities in the future, I had the foresight to accustom myself to Mrs Bowater's steep steps as well as to my cemented-in "Bateses," as I called them. My only difficulty was to decide whether to practice on them when I was fresh at the outset of my walk, or fatigued at the end of it. Naturally people grow "peculiar" when much alone: self plays with self, and the mimicry fades. These little expeditions, of course, had their spice of danger, and it made them the more agreeable. A strange dog might give me a fright. There was an old vixen which once or twice exchanged glances with me at a distance. But with my parasol I was a match for most of the creatures which humanity has left unslaughtered. My sudden appearance might startle or per- plex them. But if few were curious, fewer far were unfriendly. Boys I feared most. A hulking booby once stoned me through the grass, but fortunately he was both a coward and a poor marksman. Until winter came, I doubt if a single sunshine morning was wasted. Many a rainy one, too, found me splash- Memoirs of a Midget ing along, though then I must he a careful walker to avoid a sousing. The birds renewed their autumn song, the last flowers were blossoming. Concealed by scattered tufts of bracken where an enormous beech forked its roots and cast a golden light from its withering leaves, I would spend many a solitary hour. Above the eastern tree-tops my Kent stretched into the distance beneath the early skies. Far to my left and a little behind me rose the chimneys of gloomy Wanderslore. Breathing in the gentle air, the dreamer within would stray at will. There I kept the anniversary of my mother's birthday; twined a wreath for her of ivy-flowers and winter green ; and hid it secretly in a forsaken blackbird's nest in the woods. Still I longed for my old home again. Mrs Bowater's was a stuffy and meagre little house, and when meals were in prepara- tion, none too sweet to the nose. Especially low I felt, when a scrawling letter was now and then delivered by the post- man from Pollie. Her spelling and grammar intensified my homesickness. Miss Fenne, too, had not forgotten me. I pored over her spidery epistles till my head ached. Why, if I had been so rash and undutiful, was she so uneasy? Even the texts she chose had a parched look. The thought of her spectacling my minute handwriting and examining the proof that I was still a child of wrath, gave my pride a silly qualm. So Mrs Bowater came to my rescue, and between us we concocted replies to her which, I am afraid, were not more intelligible for a tendency on my landlady's part to express my sentiments in the third person. This little service set her thinking of Sunday and church. She was not, she told me, "what you might call a religious woman," having been compelled "to keep her head up in the world, and all not being gold that glitters." She was none the less a regular attendant at St Peter's — a church a mile or so away in the valley, whose five bells of a Sabbath evening never failed to recall my thoughts to Lyndsey and to dip me into the waters of melancholy. I loved their mellow clanging in the lap of the wind, yet it was rather doleful to be left alone with my candles, and only Henry sullenly squatting in the passage awaiting his mistress's return. 83 Memoirs of a Midget "Not that you need making any better, miss," Mrs Bovvater assured me. "Even a buttercup — or a retriever dog, for that matter — being no fuller than it can hold of what it is, in a manner of speaking. But there's the next world to be accounted for, and hopes of reunion on another shore, where, so I under- stand, mere size, body or station, will not be noticeable in the sight of the Lamb. Not that I hold with the notion that only the good so-called will be there." This speech, I must confess, made me exceedingly uncom- fortable. "Wherever I go, Mrs Bowater," I replied hastily, "I shall not be happy unless you are there." "D. V.," said Mrs Bowater, grimly, "I will." Still, I remained unconverted to St Peter's. Why, I hardly know : perhaps it was her reference to its pew rents, or her de- scription of the vicar's daughters (who were now nursing their father at Tunbridge Wells), or maybe even it was a stare from her husband which I happened at that precise moment to intercept from the wall. Possibly if I myself had taken a "sitting," this aura of formality would have faded away. Mrs Bowater was a little reassured, however, to hear that my father and mother, in spite of Miss Fenne, had seldom taken me to church. They had concluded that my absence was best both for me and for the con- gregation. And I told her of our little evening services in the drawing-room, with Mrs Ballard, the parlourmaid, Pollie, and the Boy on the sofa, just as it happened to be their respective "Sun- days in." This set her mind at rest. Turn and turn about, on one Sun- day evening she went to St Peter's and brought back with her the text and crucial fragments of Mr Crimble's sermon, and on the next we read the lessons together and sang a hymn. Once, in- deed, I embarked upon a solo, "As pants the hart," one of my mother's favourite airs. But I got a little shaky at "O for the wings," and there was no rambling, rumbling chorus from my father. But Sunday was not my favourite day on Beechwood Hill. Mrs Bowater looked a little formal with stiff white "frill- ing" round her neck. She reminded me of a leg of mutton. To judge from the gloom and absentmindedness into which they sometimes plunged her, quotations from Mr Crimble could be 84 Memoirs of a Midget double-edged. My real joy was to hear her views on the fashions and manners of her fellow-worshippers. Well, so the months went by. Winter came with its mists and rain^ and frosts, and a fire in the polished grate was no longer an evening luxury but a daily nerd. As often as possible I went out walking. When the weather was too inclement, 1 danced for an hour or so, for joy and exercise, and went swimming on a chair. I would entertain myself also in watching through the muslin curtains the few passers-by ; sorting out their gaits, and noses, and clothes, and acquaintances, and guessing their characters, occu- pations, and circumstances. Certain little looks and movements led me to suppose that, even though I was perfectly concealed, the more sensitive among them were vaguely uneasy under this secret scutiny. In such cases (though very reluctantly) I always drew my eyes away: first because I did not like the thought of encroach- ing on their privacy, and next, because I was afraid their un- easiness might prevent them coming again. But this microscopic examination of mankind must cease with dusk, and the candle- hours passed rather heavily at times. The few books I had brought away from Lyndsey were mine now nearly by heart. So my eye would often wander up to a small bookcase that hung out of reach on the other side of the chimney-piece. 85 Chapter Ten ONE supper-time I ventured to ask Mrs Bowater if she would hand me down a tall, thin, dark-green volume, whose ap- pearance had particularly taken my fancy. A simple enough request, but surprisingly received. She stiffened all over and eyed the bookcase with a singular intensity. "The books there," she said, "are what they call the dead past burying its dead." Spoon in hand, I paused, looking now at Mrs Bowater and now at the coveted book. "Mr Bowater," she added from deep down in herself, "followed the sea." This was, in fact, Mr Bowater's debut in our conversation, and her remark, uttered in so hollow yet poignant a tone, produced a romantic expectancy in my mind. "Is " I managed to whisper at last : "I hope Mr Bowater isn't dead?" Mrs Bowater's eyes were like lead in her long, dark-skinned face. She opened her mouth, her gaze travelled slowly until, as I realized, it had fixed itself on the large yellowing photograph be- hind my back. "Dead, no"; she echoed sepulchrally. "Worse than." By which I understood that, far from being dead, Mr Bowater was still actively alive. And yet, apparently, not much the happier for that. Instantaneously I caught sight of a rocky, storm- strewn shore, such as I had seen in my Robinson Crusoe, and then- Mr Iiowater, still "following' the sea." "Never, never," continued Mrs Bowater in her Bible voice, "never to darken these doors again!" I stole an anxious glance over my shoulder. There was such a brassy boldness in the re- sponsive stare that I was compelled to shut my eyes. But Mrs Bowater had caught my expression. "He was, as some would say," she explained with gloomy pride, "a handsome man. Do handsome he did never. But there, miss, things being as they must be, and you in the green of your youth — though 86 Memoirs of a Midget hearing the worst may he a wholesome physic if taken with care, as I have told Fanny many a time. . . ." She paused to breathe. "What I was saying is, there can be no harm in your looking at the hook if that's all there's to it." With that she withdrew the dry-looking volume from the shelf and laid it on the table beside my chair. I got down, opened it in the middle (as my father had taught me, in order to spare the binding), opened it on a page inky black as night all over, but starred with a design as familiar to me as the lines on the palm of my hand. "But oh! Mr> Howater!" I cried, all in a breath, running across, dragging back the curtain, and pointing out into the night; "look, look, it's there! It's Orion!" There, indeed, in the heavens beyond my window, straddling the dark, star for star the same as those in the book, stood the Giant, shaking his wondrous fires upon the air. Even Mrs Bowater was moved by my enthusiasm. She came to the table, compared at my direction chart with sky, and was compelled rather grudgingly to admit that her husband's book was at least true to the facts. Stooping low, I read out a brief passage. She listened. And it seemed a look of girlhood came into the shadowy face uplifted towards the window. So the stars came into my life, and faithful friends they have remained to this day. Mrs Bowater's little house being towards the crest of the hill, with sunrise a little to the left across the meadows, my window commanded about three-fifths of the southern and eastern skies. By day I would kneel down and study for hours the charts, and thus be prepared for the dark. Night after night, when the weather was fair, or the windy clouch majde mock of man's celes- tial patternings, I would sit in the glow of the firelight and sum- mon these magic shiners each by name — Bellatrix. huge Betel- ge,use, Aldebaran, and the rest. I would look at one, and, while so doing, watch another. This not only isolated the smaller star-. but gradually I became aware that they were one and all furtively signalling to n\c! About a fortnight later my old Lyndsey friend, the Dogstar, topped the horizon fringe of woodland. 1 heard my- self shout at him t across the world. His sudden molten bursts of crimson betwixt his emeralds and sapphires filled me with an almost ridiculous delight. 87 Memoirs of a Midget By the middle of December I had mastered all the greater stars in my region, and with my spyglass a few even of the Gammas and Deltas. But much of the zenith and all the north was closed to me, and — such is human greed — I began to pine beyond measure for a sight of Deneb, Vega, and the Chair. This desire grew un- endurable, and led me into a piece of genuine f oolhardiness. I de- termined to await the first clear still night and then to sally out and make my way, by hook or crook, up to my beech-roots, from which I should be able to command a fair stretch of the northern heavens. A quiet spell favoured me. I waited until Mrs Bowater had gone to her bedroom, then muffled myself up in my thickest clothes and stole out into the porch. At my first attempt, one glance into the stooping dark was enough. At the second, a furtive sighing breath of wind, as I breasted the hill, suddenly flapped my mantle and called in my ear. I turned tail and fled. But never faint heart won fair constellation. At the third I pressed on. The road was deserted. No earthly light showed anywhere ex- cept from a lamp-post this side of the curve of the hill. I frisked along, listening and peering, and brimming over with painful de- light. The dark waned ; and my eyes grew accustomed to the thin starlight. I gained the woods unharmed. Rich was my reward. There and then I begged the glimmering Polestar to be true to Mr Bowater. Fear, indeed, if in a friendly humour, is enlivening company. Instead of my parasol I had brought out a curved foreign knife (in a sheath at least five inches long) which I had discovered on my parlour what-not. The whisperings of space, the calls of indetectable birds in the wastes of the sky, the sudden appearance of menacing or sinister shapes which vanished or melted themselves into mere stocks or stones as I drew near — my heart gave many an anguished jump. But quiet, and the magnificence of night, vanquished all folly at last. It seemed to me that a Being whom one may call Silence was brooding in solitude where living and human visitants are rare, and that in his company a harmless spirit may be at peace. Oblivious of my ungainly knife, yet keeping a firm arm on it, self seemed to be the whole scene there, and my body being so small I was perhaps less a disturber than were most intruders of that solemn repose. Why I kept these night-walks secret, I cannot say. It was not apprehension of Mrs Bowater. She would have questioned my 88 Memoirs of a Midget discretion, but would not, I think, have attempted to dissuade me from them against my will. No. It may be that every true astronomer is a miser at heart, and keeps some Lambda or Mu or lost nebula his eternal friend, named with his name, but unre- corded on any chart. For my part I hoarded the complete north for a while. A fright I got one night, however, kept me indoors for the better part of a week. In my going out the little house door had been carelessly left unlatched. Algol and the red planet Mars had been my quarry among the floating woolpack clouds. The wind was lightly blowing from the north-west after the calm. I drew down my veil and set off briskly and lightheartedly for home. The sight of the dark-looking hole in the door quickly sobered me down. All was quiet, however, but on entering my room, there was a strangeness in the air, and that not due to my landlady's for- lorn trumpetings from above. Through the floating vaporous light I trod across to my staircase and was soon in bed. Hardly had my eyes closed when there broke out of the gloom around me a dismal, appalling cry. I soon realized that the creeping horror this caused in me was as nothing compared with that of the poor I least, lured, no doubt, into the house by Henry, at finding itself beneath a strange roof. "Puss, puss," I pleaded shakenly ; and again broke out that heart-sick cry. Knife in hand, I descended my staircase and edging as far as possible from the baleful globes greenly burning beneath a mahog- any chair, I threw open both doors and besought my unwelcome visitor to take his departure. The night wind came fluttering ; there was the blur of a scuttering, shapeless form, and in the flash of an eye I was sprawling on the floor. A good deal shaken, with a nasty scratch on my thigh, hut otherwise unharmed, I waved my hand after the fugitive and returned to bed. The blood soon ceased to flow. Not daring to send my blood- stained nightgown to the wash, I concealed it behind my dresses in the wardrobe, and the next fine morning carried it off with me and buried it as deeply as I could in a deserted rabbit-burrow in the woods. Such is an evil conscience that, first, I had the fancy that during my digging a twig had inexplicably snapped in the un- dergrowth ; and next, for "burnt offering," I made Mrs Bowatei the present of an oval handglass set in garnets (one of my grand- 89 Memoirs of a Midget father's gifts). This she took down to a local jeweller's to be mounted with a pin, and wore it on Sundays in place of her usual cameo depicting the Three Graces disporting themselves under a Palm-tree beside a Fountain. Meanwhile I had heard a little more about the "Fanny" whom Mrs Bowater had mentioned. My landlady was indeed a slow confkler. Fanny, I gathered, had a post as mistress at a school some forty miles away. She taught the little boys "English." The fleeting Miss Perry returned to mind, and with a faint dis- may I heard that Fanny would soon be returning home for the Christmas holidays. Mrs Bowater's allusions to her were the more formidable for being veiled. I dreaded the invasion. Would she not come "between us"? Then by chance I found hidden in my star-book the photo- graph of an infant in arms and of a pensive, ringleted woman, who, in spite of this morsel in her lap, seemed in her gaze out of nowhere to be vaguely afraid. On the back was scrawled in pencil : "F. : six weeks" — and an extremely cross six weeks "F." looked. For some inexplicable reason I pushed back this lady's photograph into the book, and said nothing about it. The suspi- cion had entered my mind that Fanny was only a daughter by marriage. I sank into a kind of twilight reflection at this. It seemed, in an odd fashion, to make Mrs Bowater more admirable, her husband more formidable, and the unknown Fanny more mysterious and enigmatical. At the first opportunity I crept my way to the subject and asked my landlady if she could show me a portrait of her daughter. The photograph she produced from upstairs had in fading al- most become a caricature. It had both blackened and greyed. It depicted herself many years younger but hardly less grim in appearance in full flounced skirts, Fanny as a child of about five or six standing at her knee, and Mr Bowater leaning with singu- lar amenity behind her richly-carved chair, the fingers of his left hand resting disposedly on her right shoulder. I looked anx- iously at the child. It was certainly crosspatch "F.", and a far from prepossessing little creature with that fixed, level gaze. Mr Bowater, on the other hand, had not yet adopted the wild and rigid stare which dominated the small parlour. Mrs Bowater surveyed the group with a lackadaisical detach- ment. "Fractious! — you can see the tears on her cheeks for all 90 Memoirs of a Midget what the young man could do with his woolly lamb and grimaces. It was the heyday." What was the heyday, I wondered. "Was Mr Bowater — at- tached to her?" seemed a less intrusive question. "Doted," she replied, polishing the glass with her apron. "But not to much purpose— with an eye for every petticoat." This seemed a difficult conversation to maintain. "Don't you think, Mrs Bowater," 1 returned zealously, "there is just the faintest tinge of Mr Bowater in the chin? 1 don't," I added can- didly, "see the faintest glimpse of you." Mrs I'm twater merely tightened her lips. "And is she like that now?" I asked presently. Mrs Bowater re-wrapped frame and photograph in their p of newspaper. "It's looks, miss, that are my constant anxiety: and you may he thankful for being as you might say preserved from the world. What's more, the father will out, I suppose, from now till Day of Judgment." How strangely her sentiments at times resembled my god- mother's, and yet how different they were in effect. My thoughts after this often drifted to Mrs Bowater's early married life. And so peculiar are the workings of the mind that her husband's star-chart, his sleek appearance as a young father, the mysterious reference to the petticoats, awoke in me an almost romantic in- terest in him. To such a degree that it gradually hecame my custom to cast his portrait a satirical little bow of greeting when I emerged from my bedroom in the morning, and even to kiss my hand to his invisible stare when I retired for the night. To all of which advances he made no reply. My next bout of star-gazing presaged disaster. I say star-gaz- ing, for it is true that I stole out after honest folk are abed only when the heavens were swept and garnished. But, as a matter of fact, my real tryst was with another Self. Had my lot been dif- ferent, I might have sought that self in Terra del Fuego or Malay, or in a fine marriage. Mine was a smaller world. Bo-peep I would play with shadow and dew-head. And if Ulysses, as my father had read me, stopped his ears against the Sirens, I contrari- wise unsealed mine to the ethereal airs of that hare wintry solitude. The spectral rattle of the parched beechleaves on the saplings, the faintest whisper in the skeleton bracken set me peeping, peering, 91 Memoirs of a Midget tippeting; and the Invisibles, if they heeded me, merely smiled on me from their grave, all-seeing eyes. As for the first crystal sparking of frost, I remember in my folly I sat down (bunched up, fortunately, in honest lamb's-wool) and remained, minute by minute, unstirring, unwinking, watching as if in my own mind the exquisite small fires kindle and flit from point to point of lichen and bark, until — out of this engrossment — little but a burn- ing icicle was left to trudge along home. It was December 23rd. I remember that date, and even now hardly understand the meaning or intention of what it brought me. Love for the frosty, star-roofed woods, that was easy. And yet what if — though easy — it is not enough? I had lingered on, talking in my childish fashion — a habit never to leave me — to every sudden lovely morsel in turn, when, to my dismay, I heard St Peter's clock toll midnight. Was it my fancy that at the stroke, and as peacefully as a mother when she is alone with her sleeping children, the giant tree sighed, and the whole night stilled as if at the opening of a door? I don't know, for I would sometimes pretend to be afraid merely to enjoy the pre- tending. And even my small Bowater astronomy had taught me that as the earth has her poles and equator, so these are in relation to the ecliptic and the equinoctial. So too, then, each one of us — even a mammet like myself — must live in a world of the imagination which is in everlasting relation to its heavens. But I must keep my feet. I waved adieu to the woods and unseen Wanderslore. As if out of the duskiness a kind of reflex of me waved back; and I was soon hastening along down the hill, the only thing stirring in the cold, white, luminous dust. Instinctively, in drawing near, I raised my eyes to the upper windows of Mrs Bowater's crouching house. To my utter confusion. For one of them was wide open, and seated there, as if in wait for me, was a muffled figure — and that not my landlady's — looking out. All my fine boldness and excitement died in me. I may have had no ap- prehension of telling Mrs Bowater of my pilgrimages, but, not having told her, I had a lively distaste of being "found out." Stiff as a post, I gazed up through the shadowed air at the vague, motionless figure — to all appearance completely unaware of my presence. But there is a commerce between minds as 92 Memoirs of a Midget well as between eyes. I was perfectly certain that I was being thought about, up there. For a while my mind faltered. The old childish desire gathered in me — to fly, to be gone, to pass myself away. There was a door in the woods. Better sense, and perhaps a creeping curiosity, prevailed, however. With a bold front, and as if my stay in the street had been of my own choosing, I entered the gate, ascended my "Bateses," and so into the house. Then I listened. Faintly at last sounded a stealthy footfall over- head ; the window was furtively closed. Doubt vanished. In preparation for the night's expedition I had lain down in the early evening for a nap. Evidently while I had been asleep, Fanny had come home. The English mistress had caught her mother's lodger playing truant ! 93 Chapter Eleven IF it was the child of wrath in me that hungered at times after the night, woods, and solitude to such a degree that my very breast seemed empty within me ; it was now the child of grace that prevailed. With girlish exaggeration I began torturing myself in my bed with remorse at the deceit I had been practising. Now Conscience told me that I must make a full confession the first thing in the morning ; and now that it would be more decent to let Fanny "tell on me." At length thought tangled with dream, and a grisly night was mine. What was that? It was day; Mrs Bowater was herself softly calling me beyond my curtains, and her eye peeped in. Always before I had been up and dressed when she brought in my breakfast. Through a violent headache I surveyed the stooping face. Something in my appearance convinced her that I was ill, and she insisted on my staying in bed. "But, Mrs Bowater ..." I expostulated. "No, no, miss ; it was in a butt they drowned the sexton. Here you stay ; and its being Christmas Eve, you must rest and keep quiet. What with those old books and all, you have been burning the candle at both ends." Early in the afternoon on finding that her patient was little better, my landlady went off to the chemist's to get me some physic ; I could bear inactivity no longer, and rose and dressed. The fire was low, the room sluggisb, when in the dusk, as I sat dismally brooding in my chair, the door opened, and a stranger came in with my tea. She was dressed in black, and was carrying a light. With that raised in one hand, and my tea-tray held between finger and thumb of the other, she looked at mc with face a little sidelong. Her hair was dark above her clear pale skin, and drawn, without a fringe, smoothly over her brows. Her eyes were almost unnaturally light in colour. I looked at her in astonishment; she was new in my world. She 94 Memoirs of a Midget pul the tray on my tabic, poked the fire into a blaze, blew out her candle at a single puff from her pursed lips, and seating herseli on the hearthrug, clasped her hands round her km "Mother told me you were in bed, ill," she said. "I hope you are better." 1 assured her in a voice scarcely above a whisper that I was quite well again. She nestled her chin down and broke into a little laugh: "My! how you startled me!" "Then it was you," I managed to say. "Oh, yes; it was me. it was me." The words were uttered as if to herself. She stooped her cheek over her knees again, and smiled round at me. "I'm not telling" she added softly. Her tone, her expression, filled me with confusion. "But please do not suppose." 1 began angrily, "that 1 am not my own mistress here. 1 have my own key " "Oh, yes, your own mistress," she interrupted suavely, "but you see that's just what I'm nut. And the k< ■;. ! why, it's just envy that's gnawing at the roots. I've never, never in my life seen anything so queer." She suddenly raised her strange eyes on me. "What were you doing out there?" A lie perched on my lip ; but the wide, light eyes searched me through. "I went," said I. "to be in the woods — to see the stars"; then added in a rather pompous voice, "only the southern and eastern constellations are visible from this poky little window." There was no change in the expression of the two eyes that drank me in. "I see; and you want them all. That's odd, now." she went on reflectively, stabbing again at the fire; "they have never attracted me very much — angels' tin-tacks, as they say in the Sunday Schools. Fanny Bowater was looking for the moon." She turned once more, opened her lips, showing the firm row of teeth beneath them, and sang in a low voice the first words, I suppose, of some old madrigal: ''She enchants me/ And if / had my little key, and my little secret door. . . . Bui never mind. 'Tell-tale Tit, her tongue shall be slit.' It's safe with me. I'm no sneak. I>ut you might like to know. Miss M., that my mother thinks the very world of you. And so do I, for that matter; though perhaps for different reasons." 95 Memoirs of a Midget The calm, insolent words infuriated me, and yet her very accents, with a curious sweet rasp in them, like that in a sky- lark's song when he slides his last twenty feet from the clouds, were an enchantment. Ever and always there seemed to be two Fannies ; one visible, her face ; the other audible, her voice. But the enchantment was merely fuel for the flames. "Will you please remember," I broke out peremptorily, "that neither myself nor what I choose to do is any affair of yours. Mrs Bowater is an excellent landlady ; you can tell her precisely what you please; and — and" (I seemed to be choking) "I am accustomed to take my meals alone." The sidelong face grew hard and solemn in the firelight, then slowly turned, and once more the eyes surveyed me under lifted brows — like the eyes of an angel, empty of mockery or astonishment or of any meaning but that of their beauty. "There you are," she said. "One talks like one human being to another, and I should have thought you'd be grateful for that ; and this is the result. Facts are facts ; and I'm not sorry for them, good or bad. If you wish to see the last of me, here it is. I don't thrust myself on people — there's no need. But still ; I'm not telling." She rose, and with one light foot on my fender, surveyed herself for a moment with infinite composure in the large looking- glass that spanned the chimney-piece. And I? — I was exceedingly tired. My head was burning like a coal ; my thoughts in confusion. Suddenly I lost control of myself and broke into an angry, ridiculous sobbing. I simply sat there, my face hidden in my dry, hot hands, miserable and defeated. And strange Fanny Bowater, what did she do? "Heavens !" she muttered scornfully, "I gave up snivelling when I was a baby." Then voice, manner, even attitude suddenly changed — "And there's mother!" When Mrs Bowater knocked at my door, though still in my day-clothes, I was in bed again, and my tea lay untasted on a chair beside it. "Dear, dear," she said, leaning anxiously over me, "your poor cheeks are red as a firebrand, miss. Those chemists daren't put a nose outside their soaps and tooth powders. It must be Dr Phelps to-morrow if you are no better. And as plump a little Christmas pudding boiling for you in the pot as ever you 96 Memoirs of a Midget could see! Tell me, now; there's no pain anywhere — throat, limbs, or elsewhere?" I shook my head. She sprinkled a drop or two of eau de Cologne on my sheet and pillow, gently bathed my temples and hands, kindled a night-light, and left me once more to my own reflections. They were none too comfortable. One thing only was in my mind — Fanny Bowater, her face, her voice, every glance and intonation, smile, and gesture. That few minutes' talk seemed now as remote and incredible as a nightmare. The stars, the woods, my solitary delights in learning and thinking were all suddenly become empty and meaningless. She despised me : and I hated her with a passion I cannot describe. Yet in the midst of my hatred 1 longed for her company again, distracting myself with the sharp and clever speeches I might have made to her, and picturing her confounded by my contempt and indifference. But should I ever see her alone again? At every sound and movement in the house, which before had so little concerned me, I lay listening, with held breath. I might have been a mummy in a Pyramid hearkening after the fluttering pinions of its spirit come back to bring it life. But no tidings came of the stranger. When my door opened again, it was only to admit Mrs Bowater with my supper — a howl of infant's gruel, not the customary old lady's rusk and milk. I laughed angrily within to think that her daughter must have witnessed its preparation. Even at twenty, then, I had not grown used to being of so little consequence in other people's eyes. Yet, after all, who ever quite succeeds in being that? My real rage was not that Fanny had taken me as a midget, but as such a midget. Yet can I honestly say that I have ever taken her as mere Fanny, and not as such a Fanny? The truth is she had wounded my vanity, and vanity may be a more fractious nursling even than a wounded heart. Tired and fretful, I had hardly realized the flattering candour of her advances. Even her promises not to "tell" of my night-wander- ings, implied that she trusted in my honour not to tell of her promise. I thought and thought of her. She remained an enigma. Cold and hard — no one had ever spoken to me like that before. Yet her voice — it was as if it had run abont 97 Memoirs of a Midget in my blood, and made my eyes shine. A mere human sound to set me sobbing! More dangerous yet, I began to think of what Miss Bowater must be thinking of me, until, exhausted, I fell asleep, to dream that I was a child again and shut up in one of Mrs Ballard's glass jars, and that a hairy woman who was a kind of mixture of Mrs Bowater and Miss Fenne, was tapping with a thimbled finger on its side to increase my terror. Next morning, thank Heaven, admitted me to my right mind again. I got out of bed and peered through the window. It was Christmas Day. A thin scatter of snow was powdering down out of the grey sky. The fields were calm and frozen. I felt, as I might say, the hunger in my face, looking out. There was something astonishingly new in my life. Everything familiar had become a little strange. Over night, too, some one — and with mingled feelings I guessed who — must have stolen into my room while I lay asleep. Laid out on a bedside chair was a crimson padded dressing- jacket, threaded with gold, a delicate piece of needlework that would have gladdened my grandfather. Rolled up on the floor beside it was a thick woollen mat, lozenged in green and scarlet, and just of a size to spread beside my bed. These gifts multi- plied my self-reproaches and made me acutely homesick. What should I do? Beneath these thoughts was a quiet fizz of expectation and delight, like water under a boat. Pride and common sense fought out their battle in my mind. It was pride that lost the day. When Mrs Bowater brought in my breakfast, she found her invalid sitting up in Fanny's handsome jacket, and the mat laid over the bedrail for my constant con- templation. Nor had I forgotten Mrs Bowater. By a little ruse I had found out the name and address of a chemist in the town, and on the tray beside my breakfast was the fine bottle of lavender water which I had myself ordered him to send by the Christmas Eve post. "Well there, miss, you did take me in that time," she assured me. "And more like a Valentine than a Christmas present ; and its being the only scent so-called that I've any nose for." Clearly this was no occasion for the confessional, even if I had had a mind to it. But I made at least half a vow never to go star-gazing again without her knowledge. My looks pleased her better, too, though not so much better as to persuade 98 Memoirs of a Midget her to countermand Dr Phelps. Wry yellowish long hand with its worn wedding-ring was smoothing my counterpane. I clutched at it, and, shame-stricken, smiled up into her face. "You have made me very happy," I said. At this small re- mark, the heavy eyelids trembled, hut she made no reply. "Did." I managed to inquire at last, "did she have any break- fast before she went for the doctor?" "A cup of tea," said Mrs Bowater shortly. A curious happiness took possession of me. "She is very young to he teaching; not much older than I am." "'ldie danger was to keep her hack." was the obscure reply. "We don't always see eye to eye." For an instant the dark, cavernous face above me was mated by that other of birdlike lightness and beauty. "Isn't it funny?" I observed, "I had made quite, quite a different picture of her." "Looks are looks, and brains are brains; and between them you must tread very wary." About eleven o'clock a solemn-looking young man of about thirty, with a large pair of reddish leather gloves in his hand, entered the room. For a moment he did not see my bedroom, then, remarking circumspectly in a cheerful, hollow voice, "So this is our patient," he hade me good-morning, and took a seat beside my bed. A deep blush mounted up into the fair, smooth- downed cheeks as he returned my scrutiny and asked me to exhibit my tongue. I put it out, and he blushed even deeper. "And the pulse, please," he murmured, rising. I drew back the crimson sleeve of Fanny's jacket, and with extreme nicety he placed the tip of a square, icy forefinger on my wrist. Once more his fair-lashed eyelids began to blink. He extracted a fine gold watch from his waistcoat pocket, compared heat with beat, frowned, and turned to Mrs Bowater. "You are not, I assume, aware of the — the young lady's normal pulse?" 'There being no cause before to consider it, I am not," Mrs Bowater returned. "Any padn?" said Dr Phelps. "Headache," replied Mrs I'.owater on my behalf, "and shoots in the limbs." At that Dr Phelps took a metal case out of his waistcoat, 99 Memoirs of a Midget glanced at it, glanced at me, and put it back again. He leaned over so close to catch the whisper of my breathing that there seemed a danger of my losing myself in the labyrinth of his downy ear. "H'm, a little fever," he said musingly. "Have we any reason to suppose that we can have taken a chill ?" The head on the pillow stirred gently to and fro, and I think its cheek was dyed with an even sprightlier red than had coloured his. After one or two further questions, and a low colloquy with Mrs Bowater in the passage, Dr Phelps withdrew, and his carriage rolled away. "A painstaking young man," Mrs Bowater summed him up in the doorway, "but not the kind I should choose to die under. You are to keep quiet and warm, miss ; have plenty of light nourishment ; and physic to follow. Which, except for the last- mentioned, and that mainly water, one don't have to ride in a carriage to know for one's self." But "peace and goodwill" : I liked Dr Phelps, and felt so much better for his skill that before his wheels had rolled out of hearing I had leapt out of bed, dragged out the trunk that lay beneath it, and fetched out from it a treasured ivory box. On removal of the lid, this ingenious work disclosed an Oriental Temple, with a spreading tree, a pool, a long-legged bird, and a mountain. And all these exquisitely tinted in their natural colours. It had come from China, and had belonged to my mother's brother, Andrew, who was an officer in the Navy and had died at sea. This I wrapped up in a square of silk and tied with a green thread. During the whole of his visit my head had been so hotly in chase of this one stratagem that it is a marvel Dr Phelps had not deciphered it in my pulse. When Mrs Bowater brought in my Christmas dinner — little but bread sauce and a sprig of holly ! — I dipped in the spoon, and, as innocently as I knew how, inquired if her daughter would like to see some really fine sewing. The black eyes stood fast, then the ghost of a smile vanished over her features; "I'll be bound she would, miss. I'll give her your message." Alone again, I turned over on my pillow and laughed until tears all but came into my eyes. All that afternoon I waited on, the coals of fire that I had prepared for my enemy's head the night before now ashes of ioo Memoirs of a Midget penitence on my own. A dense smell of cooking pervaded the house ; and it was not until the evening that Fanny Bowater appeared. She was dressed in a white muslin gown with a wreath of pale green leaves in her hair. "I am going to a party," she said, "so I can't waste much time." "Mrs Bowater thought you would like to see some really beautiful needlework," I replied suavely. "Well," she said, "where is it?" "Won't you come a little closer?" That figure, as nearly like the silver slip of the new moon as ever I have seen, seemed to float in my direction. I held my breath and looked up into the light, dwelling eyes. "It is this," I whispered, drawing my two hands down the bosom of her crimson dressing-jacket. "It is only, Thank you, I wanted to say." In a flash her lips broke into a low clear laughter. "Why, that's nothing. Really and truly 1 hate that kind of work ; but mother often wrote of you ; there was nothing better to do; and the smallness of the thing amused me." I nodded humbly. "Yes, yes," I muttered, "Midget is as Midget wears. I know that. And — and here, Miss Bowater, is a little Christmas present from me." Voraciously I watched her smooth face as she untied the thread. "A little ivory box !" she exclaimed, pushing back the lid, "and a Buddhist temple, how very pretty. Thank you." "Yes, Miss Bowater, and, do you see, in the corner there? a moon. 'She enchants' you." "So it is," she laughed, closing the box. "I was supposing," she went on solemnly, "that I had been put in the corner in positively everlasting disgrace." "Please don't say that," I entreated. "We may be friends. mayn't we? I am better now." Her eyes wandered over my bed, my wardrobe, and all my possessions. "But yes," she said, "of course"; and laughed again. "And you believe me?" "Believe you?" "That it was the stars? I thought Mrs Bowater might be anxious if she knew. It was quite, quite safe, really; and I'm going to tell her." IOI Memoirs of a Midget "Oh, dear," she replied in a cold, small voice, "so you are still worrying about that. I — I envied you." With a glance over her shoulder, she leaned closer. "Next time you go," she breathed out to me, "we'll go together." My heart gave a furious leap; my lips closed tight. "I could tell you the names of some of the stars now," I said, in a last wrestle with conscience. "No, no," said Fanny Bowater, "it isn't the stars I'm after. The first fine night we'll go to the woods. You shall wait for me till everything is quiet. It will be good practise in practical astronomy." She watched my face, and began silently laughing as if she were reading my thoughts. "That's a bargain, then. What is life, Miss M., but experience? And what is experience, but knowing thyself? And what's knowing thyself but the very apex of wisdom ? Anyhow it's a good deal more interesting than the Prince of Denmark." "Yes", I agreed. "And there's still all but a full moon." "Aha !" said she. "But what a world with only one ! Jupiter has scores, hasn't he? Just think of his Love Lanes!" She rose to her feet with a sigh of boredom, and smoothed out her skirts with her long, narrow hands. I stared at her beauty in amazement. "I hate these parties here," she said. "They are not worth while." "You look lov — you look all right." "H'm ; but what's that when there's no one to see." "But you see yourself. You live in it." The reflected face in the glass, which, craning forward, I could just distinguish, knitted its placid brows. "Why, if that were enough, we should all be hermits. I rather think, you know, that God made man almost solely in the hope of his two-legged appreciation. But perhaps you disapprove of in- cense Why should I, Miss Bowater? My Aunt Kitilda was a Catholic : and so was my mother's family right back." "That's right," said Miss Bowater. She kissed her hand to looking-glass and four-poster, flung me a last fervid smile, and was gone. And the little box I had given her lay on the table, beside my bed. I was aroused much later by the sound of voices drawing 102 Memoirs of a Midget nearer. Instinctively 1 sat up, my senses fastened on the sound like a vampire. The voices seemed to be in argument, then the footsteps ceased and clear on the night air came the words: — "I '.nt you made me promise not to write. Oh, Fanny, and you have broken your own !" "Then you must confess," was the cautious reply, "that I am consistent. As for the promises, you are quite, quite welcome to the pieces." "You mean that?" was the muffled retort. '•That," cried the other softly, "depends entirely on what you mean by 'mean.' Please look happy ! You'd soon grow old and uglier if there was only that scrap of moon to light your face." "Oh, Fanny. Will you never be serious?" — the misery in the words seemed to creep about in my own mind for shelter. They were answered by a sparkling gush of laughter, followed by a crisp, emphatic knock at the door. Fanny had returned from her party, and the eavesdropper buried her face in her pillow. So she enjoyed hurting people. And yet. . . . !03 Chapter Twelve THE next afternoon Mrs Bowater was out when Dr Phelps made his call. It was Fanny who ushered him into the room. He felt my pulse again, held up the phial of medicine to the light, left unconsulted my tongue, and pronounced that "we are doing very nicely." As indeed I was. While this professional inquiry was in progress Fanny stood silently watch- ing us, then exclaimed that it was half-past four, and that I must have my tea. She was standing behind Dr Phelps, and for a few seconds I watched with extreme interest but slow under- standing a series of mute little movements of brows and lips which she was directing at me while he was jotting down a note in a leather pocket-book. At length I found myself repeating — as if at her dictation — a polite little invitation to him to take tea with me. The startled blue eyes lifted themselves above the pocket-book, the square, fair head was bowing a polite refusal, when, "But, of course, Dr Phelps," Fanny broke in like one inspired, "how very thoughtless of me!" "Thank you, thank you, Miss Bowater, but " cried Dr Phelps, with a smooth uplifted hand, and almost statuesque in his pose. His refusal was too late. Miss Bowater had hastened from the room. His panic passed. He reseated himself, and remarking that it was a very cold afternoon, predicted that if the frost con- tinued, skating might be expected. Conversation of this kind is apt so soon to faint away like a breeze in hot weather, that I kept wondering what to say next. Besides, whenever Dr Phelps seemed impelled to look at me, he far more quickly looked away, and the sound of his voice suggested that he was uncertain if he was not all but talking to himself. To put him more at his ease I inquired boldly if he had many other midgets among his patients. The long lashes swept his cheeks; he pondered a while on my landlady's window curtains. "As a matter of fact perhaps 104 Memoirs of a Midget not," he replied at last, as if giving me the result of a mathematical calculation. "I suppose, Dr Phelps," I then inquired, "there might he more, at any time, might there not?" Our glances this time met. He blinked. "My father and mother, 1 menu." I explained in some con- fusion, "were just of the com — of the ordinary size. And what I was wondering is, whether you yourself would be sorry — in quite a general way, of course — if you found your practice going down like that." "Going down?" "I mean the patients coming smaller. I never had the op- portunity of asking our own doctor, Dr Grose. At Lyndsey, you know. Besides, I was a child then. Now, first of all, it is true, isn't it, that giants are usually rather dull-witted people? So nobody would deliberately choose that kind of change. If, then, quality does vary with quantity, mightn't there be an im- provement in the other direction? You will think I am being extremely ego — egotistical. But one must take Jack's side, mustn't one? — even if one's Jill?" "Jack?" "The Giant Killer." He looked at me curiously, and his finger and thumb once more strayed up towards the waistcoat pocket in which he kept his thermometer. But instead of taking it out, he coughed. "There is a norm " he began in a voice not quite his own. "Ah," I cried, interrupting him, and throwing up my hands, "there is indeed. But why, I ask myself, so vast a number of examples of it !" It was as if a voice within were prompting me. Perhaps the excitement of Fanny's homecoming was partly to blame. "I sit at my window here and watch the passers-by. Norms, in mere size, Dr Phelps, every one of them, if you allow for the few little defects in the — the moulding, you know. And just think what London must be like. Why, nobody can be notice- able, there." "But surely," Dr Phelps smiled indulgently, though his eye- lashes seemed to be in the way, "surely variety is possible, without — er — excess. Indeed there must be variety in order to arrive at our norm, mustn't there ?" 105 Memoirs of a Midget "You'd be astonished," I assured him, "how slight the differ- ences really are. A few inches or ounces ; red or black or fawn ; and age, and sex, of course; that's all. Now, isn't it true, Dr Phelps, that almost any twenty women — unselected, you know — would weigh about a ton? And surely there's no particular reason why just human shells should weigh as much as that. We are not lobsters. And yet, do you know, I have watched, and they really seem to enjoy being the same as one another. One would think they tried to be — manners and habits, knowledge and victuals, hats and boots, everything. And if on the outside, I suppose on the inside, too. What a mysterious thing it seems. All of them thinking pretty much the same : Norm-Thoughts, you know; just five-foot-fivers. After all, one wouldn't so much mind the monotonous packages, if the contents were different. 'Forty feeding like one' — who said that? Now, truly, Dr Phelps, don't you feel? It would, of course, be very serious at first for their mothers and fathers if all the little human babies here came midgets, but it would be amusing, too, wouldn't it? . . . And it isn't quite my own idea, either." Dr Phelps cleared his throat, and looked at his watch. "But surely," he said, with a peculiar emphasis which I have noticed men are apt to make when my sex asks intelligent or unin- telligent questions : "Surely you and I are understanding one another. / try to make myself clear to you. So extremes can meet; at least I hope so." He gave me a charming little awk- ward bow. "Tell me, then, what is this peculiar difference you are so anxious about? You wouldn't like a pygmy England, a pygmy Universe, now, would you, Miss M. ?" It was a great pity. A pygmy England — the thought dazzled me. In a few minutes Dr Phelps would perhaps have set all my doubts at rest. But at that moment Miss Bowater came in with the tea, and the talk took quite another turn. She just made it Fanny's size. Even Dr Phelps looked a great deal handsomer in her company. More sociable. Nor were we to remain "three's none." She had finished but one slice of toast over my fire, and inflamed but one cheek, when a more pro- tracted but far less vigorous knock than Dr Phelps's on the door summoned her out of the room again. And a minute or 1 06 Memoirs of a Midget two afterwards our tea-party became one of four, and its s<- (in number, at any rate) equally matched. By a happy coincidence, just as Good King Wenceslas had looked out on the Feast of Stephen, so Mr Crimble, the curate- in-charge at St Peter's, had looked in. By his "Ah, 1 'helps!" it was evident that our guests were well acquainted with one another; and Fanny and I were soon enjoying a tea enriched by the cream of local society. Mr Crimble had mild dark eyes, gold spectacles, rather full red lips, and a voice that reminded me of raspberries. I think he had heard of me, for he was very attentive, and handled my small cup and saucer with remarkable, if rather conspicuous, ingenuity. Candles were lit. The talk soon became animated. From the weather of this Christmas we passed to the weather of last. to Dr Phelps's prospects of skating, and thence to the good old times, to Mr Pickwick, to our respective childish beliefs in Santa Claus, stockings, and to credulous parents. Fanny repeated some of the naive remarks made by her pupils, and Mr Crimble capped them with a collection of biblical bons mots culled in his Sunday School. I couldn't glance fast enough from one to the other. Dr Phelps steadily munched and watched Mr Crimble. He in turn told us of a patient of his, a Mrs Hall, who, poor old creature, was 101, and enjoyed nothing better than playing at "Old Soldier" with a small grandson. "Literally, second childhood. Senile decay," he said, passing his cup. From Mrs Hall we naturally turned to parochial affairs: and then Mr Crimble, without more ado, bolted his mouthful of toast, in order to explain the inmost purpose of his visit. He was anxious to persuade Miss Bowater to sing at the annual Parish Concert, which was to be given on New Year'- Eve. Try as he might, he had been unable to persuade his vicar of the efficacy of Watch Night Services. So a concert was to be given instead. Now, would Miss Bowater, as ever, be ever so kind, and would I add my entreaties to his? As he looked at Fanny and I did too — with one of those odd turns of the mind, I was conscious that the peculiar leaning angle of his head was exactly the same as my own. Whereupon I glanced at Dr Phelps, but he sat fair and foursquare, one feeding like forty. Fanny remaining hesitant, appeal was made to him. With al- 107 Memoirs of a Midget most more cordiality than Mr Crimble appeared to relish, he agreed that the musical talent available was not so abundant as it might be, and he promised to take as many of the expensive tickets as Miss Bowater would sing songs. "I don't pretend to be musical, not like you, Crimble. But I don't mind a pleasant voice — in moderation ; and I assure you, Miss Bowater, I am an excellent listener — given a fair chance, you know." "But then," said Fanny, "so am I. I believe now really — and one can judge from one's speaking voice, can't one, Mr Crimble? — I believe you sing yourself." "Sing, Miss Bowater," interjected Mr Crimble, tipping back his chair. " 'The wedding guest here beat his chest, for he heard the loud bassoon.' Now, conjuring tricks, eh, Phelps? With a stethoscope and a clinical thermometer; and I'll hold the hat and make the omelette. It would bring down the house." "It was his breast he beat ; not his chest/' I broke in. The six eyes slid round, as if at a voice out of the clouds. There was a pause. "Why, exactly," cried Mr Crimble, slapping his leg. "But I wish Dr Phelps ivould sing," said Fanny in a small voice, passing him the sugar. "He must, he shall," said Mr Crimble, in extreme jubilation. "So that's settled. Thank you, Miss Bowater," his eyes seemed to melt in his head at his success, "the programme is complete." He drew a slip of paper from his inside pocket and brandished a silver pencil-case. "Mrs Browning, 'The Better Land' — better and better every year. 'Caller Herrin' ' to follow — though what kind of herrings caller herrings are I've never been able to discover." He beamed on me. "Miss Finch — she is sending me the names of her songs this evening. Miss Willett and Mr Bangor — 'O that we two,' and a queer pair they'd look ; and 'My luv is like.' Hardy annuals. Mrs Bullace — recitations, ' Abt Vogler,' and no doubt a Lord Tennyson. Flute, Mr Piper ; 'Cello, Miss Oran, a niece of Lady Pollacke's ; and for comic relief, Tom Sturgess, of course ; though I hope he will be a little more — er — eclectic this year. And you and I," again he turned his boyish brow on me, "will sit with Mrs Bowater in the front row of the gallery — a claque, Phelps, eh ?" 108 Memoirs of a Midget He seemed to be in the topmost height of good spirits. Well, thought I, if social badinage and bonhomie were as pleasant and easy as this, why hadn't my mother ? "But why in the gallery?" drawled Fanny suddenly from the hearthrug, with the little steel poker ready poised; "Miss M. dances/' The clear voice rasped on the word. A peculiar silence followed the lingering accents. The two gentlemen's faces smoothed them- selves out, and both, I knew, though I gave them no heed, sat gaz- ing, not at their hostess. But Fanny herself was looking at me now, her light eyes quite still in the flame of the candles, which, with their reflections in Mrs Bowater's pier glass were not two, hut four. It was into those eyes I gazed, yet not into, only at. All day my thoughts had remained on her, like bubbles in wine. All day hope of the coming night and of our expedition to the woods had been, as it were, a palace in which my girlish fancy had wandered, and now, though only a few minutes ago I had been cheeping my small extemporary philosophy into the ear of Dr Phelps, the fires of self-contempt and hatred burned up in me hotter than ever. I forgot even the dainty dressing- jacket on my back. "Mi>s Bowater is pleased to be satirical," I said, my hand clenched in my lap. "Now was I?" cried Fanny, appealing to Dr Phelps, "be just to me." Dr Phelps opened his mouth, swallowed, and shut it again. "I really think not, you know," said Mr Crimble persuasively, coming to her rescue. "Indeed it would be extremely kind and — er — entertaining; though dancing — er — and — unless, perhaps, so many strangers. . . . We can count in any case on your being present, can we not, Miss M. ?" He leaned over seductively, finger and thumb twitching at the plain gold cross suspended from his watch-chain on his black waistcoat. "Oh, yes," I replied, "you can count on me for the claque." The room had sunk into a stillness. Constraint was in the air. "Then that's settled. On New Year's Eve we — we all meet again. Unless, Miss Bowater, there is any hope of seeing you meanwhile — just to arrange the titles and so on of your songs on the pro- gramme." "No," smiled Fanny, "I see no hope whatever. You forget, 109 Memoirs of a Midget Mr Crimble, there are dishes to wash. And hadn't you better see Miss Finch first?" Mr Crimble cast a strange look at her face. He was close to her, and it was almost as if he had whispered, "Fanny." But there was no time for further discussion. Dr Phelps, gloved and buttoned, was already at the door. Fanny returned into the room when our guests had taken their departure. I heard their male voices in vivacious talk as they marched off in the cold dark air beneath my window. "I thought they were never going," said Fanny lightly, twisting up into her hair an escaped ringlet. "I think, do you know, we had better say nothing to mother about the tea — at least not yet a while. They are dull creatures : it's pottering about so dull and sleepy a place, I suppose. What could have inspired you to invite Dr Phelps to tea? Really, really, Miss M., you are rather astonish- ing. Aren't you, now?" What right had she to speak to me like this, as if we had met again after another life? She paused in her swift collection of the remnants of our feast. "Sulking?" she inquired sweetly. With an effort I kept my self-possession. "You meant what you said, then ? You really think I would sink to that ?" " 'Sink !' To what? Oh, the dancing, you mean. How funny you should still be fretting about that. Still, you look quite enter- taining when you are cross : 'Diaphenia like the daffadowndilly,' you know. Good Heavens! Surely we shouldn't hide any kind of lights under bushels, should we? I'm sure the Reverend Harold would agree to that. Isn't it being the least bit pedantic ?" "I should think," I retorted, "Mr Crimble would say anything pleasant to any young woman." "I have no doubt he would," she agreed. "The other cheek al- so, you know. But the real question is what the young woman would say in reply. You are too sensitive, Miss M." "Perhaps I am." Oh that I could escape from this horrible net between us. "I know this, anyhow — that I lay awake till mid- night because you had made a kind of promise to come in. Then I — I 'counted the pieces.' " Her face whitened beneath the clear skin. "Oh, so we list- she began, turning on me, then checked herself. "I tell you this," she said, her hand trembling, "I'm sick of it all. Those — those no Memoirs of a Midget fools! Phi I thought that you, being as you are — snippeting along out of the night — might understand. There's such a thing as friendship on false pretences, Miss M." Was she, too, addressing, as she supposed, a confidant hardly more external to herself than that inward being whom we engage in such endless talk and argument? Her violence shocked me; still more her "fools." For the word was still next-door neigh- hour in my mind to the dreadful "Raca." '"Understand,"' I said, "I do, if you would only let me. You just hide in your — in your own outside. You think because I am as I am that I'm only of that much account. It's you are the — foolish. Oh, don't let us quarrel. You just came. I never knew. Every hour, every minute . . ." Inarticulate my tongue might be, but my face told its tale. She must have heard many similar confessions, yet an almost childish incredulity lightened in hers. "Keep there," she said; "keep there! I won't be a moment." She hastened out of the room with the tea things, poising an instant like a bird on a branch as she pushed open the door with her foot. The slave left behind her listened to her footsteps dying away in a mingling of shame, sorrow, and of a happiness beyond words. I know now that it is not when we are near people that we reach themselves, not, I mean, in their looks and words, but only by following their thoughts to where the spirit within plays and has its being. Perhaps if I had realized this earlier, I shouldn't have fallen so easy a prey to Fanny Bowater. I waited — but that particular exchange of confidences was never to be completed. A key sounded in the latch. Fanny had but time to show herself with stooping, almost serpent- like head, in the doorway. "To-night!" she whispered. "And not a word, not a word !" in Chapter Thirteen WAS there suspicion in the face of Mrs Bowater that eve- ning? Our usual familiar talk dwindled to a few words this supper-time. The old conflict was raging in my mind — hatred of my deceit, horror at betraying an accomplice, and longing for the solemn quiet and solitude of the dark. I crushed my doubtings down and cast a dismal, hostile look at the long face, so yellow of skin and sombre in expression. When would she be gone and leave me in peace? The packed little parlour hung stagnant in the candlelight. It seemed impossible that Mrs Bowater could not hear the thoughts in my mind. Apparently not. She tidied up my few belongings, which, contrary to my usual neat habits, I had left scattered over the table. She bade me good-night ; but paused in the doorway to look back at me. But what intimacy she had meant to share with me was put aside. "Good-night, miss," she repeated ; "and I'm sure, God bless you." It was the dark, quiet look that whelmed over me. I gazed mutely, without response, and the silence was broken by a clear voice like that of a cautious mocking-bird out of a wood. It called softly on two honeyed notes, "Mo — ther !" The house draped itself in quiet. Until ten had struck, and footsteps had ascended to the rooms overhead, I kept close in my bedchamber. Then I hastily put on my outdoor clothes, shivering not with cold, but with expectation, and sat down by the fire, pre- pared for the least sound that would prove that Fanny had not for- gotten our assignation. But I waited in vain. The cold gathered. The vaporous light of the waning moon brightened in the room. The cinders fainted to a darker glow. I heard the kitchc. clock with its cracked, cantankerous stroke beat out eleven. Its solemn mate outside, who had seemingly lost his voice, ticked on. Hope died out in me, leaving an almost physical nausea, a profound hatred of myself and even of being alive. "Well," a cold voice said in my ear, "that's how we are treated ; that 112 Memoirs of a Midget comes of those eyes we cannot forget. Cheated, cheated again, my friend." In those young days disappointment set my heart aching with a bitterness less easy to bear than it is now. No doubt I was steeped in sentimentality and folly. It was the vehemence of this new feeling that almost terrified mc. J kit my mind was my world; it is my only excuse. I could not get out of that by merely turning a tiny key in a Brahma lock. Nor could I betake myself to bed. How sleep in such an inward storm of reproaches, humiliation, and despised love? I drew down my veil, wrapped my shawl closer round my shoulders, descended my staircase, and presently stood in the porch in confrontation of the night. Low on the horizon, at evens with me across space, and burning with a limpid fire, hung my chosen — Sir his. The sudden sight of him pouring his brilliance into my eyes brought a revulsion of feeling. He was "cutting me dead." I brazened him down. I trod with ex- quisite caution down the steps, daring but one fleeting glance, as I turned, at Fanny's window. It was blinded, empty. Toiling on heavily up the hill, I sourly comforted myself with the vow that she should realize how little I cared, that her room had been sweeter than her company. Never more would I put trust in "any child of man." Gradually, however, the quiet night received me into its peace (just as, poor soul, did the Moor Desdemona), and its influence stole into my darkened mind. The smooth, columnar boughs of the beeches lifted themselves archingly into the sky. Soon I was climbing over the moss-bound roots of my customary ob- servatory. But this night the stars were left for a while un- signalled and unadmired. The crisped, frost-lined leaves scattered between the snake-like roots sparkled faintly. Years seemed to have passed away, dwindled in Time's hour-glass, since my previ- ous visit. That Miss M. had ghosted herself away for ever. In my reverie the vision of Fanny re-arose into my imagination — that secret still fountain — of herself. Asleep now. ... I could no more free myself from her sorcery than I could dis- claim the two hands that lay in my lap. She was indeed more closely mine than they — and nearer in actuality than 1 had imagined. 113 Memoirs of a Midget A faint stir in the woods suddenly caught my attention. The sound neared. I pressed my hand to my breast, torn now between two incentives, two desires — to fly, to stay. And on the path by which I had come, appeared, some yards distant, in the faint trickling light, the dark figure of my dreams. She was dressed in a black cloak, its peaked old-fashioned hood drawn over her head. The moonbeams struck its folds as she moved. Her face was bowed down a little, her hand from within clutching her cloak together. And I realized instinctively and with joy that the silence and solitude of the woods alarmed her. It was I who was calm and self-contained. She paused and looked around her — stood listening with lips divided that yet could not persuade themselves to call me by name. For my part, I softly gathered myself closer together and continued to gloat. And suddenly out of the far-away of the woods a nightbird loosed its cry: "A-hoo. . . . Ahoo-oo-oo-hooh !" There is a hunter in us all. I laughed inwardly as I watcned. A few months more and I was to watch a lion-tamer . . . but let me keep to one thing at a time. I needled myself in, and, almost hooting the sound through my mouth, as if in echo of the bird, I heard myself call stealthily across the air, "Fanny ! — Fanny Bowater !" The cloaked figure recoiled, with lifted head, like the picture of a fawn I have seen, and gazed in my direction. Seeing nothing of me amidst the leaves and shadows, she was about to flee, when I called again : — "It is I, Fanny. Here : here !" Instantly she woke to herself, came near, and looked down on me. No movement welcomed her. "I was tired of waiting," I yawned. "There is nothing to be frightened about." Many of her fellow creatures, I fancy, have in their day wearied of waiting for Fanny Bowater, but few have had the courage or sagacity to tell her so. She had not recovered her equanimity fully enough to refrain from excuses. "Surely you did not expect me while mother was moving? I am not accustomed, Miss M., to midnight wanderings." "I gave up expecting you, and was glad to be alone." The barb fell short. She looked stilly around her. The solemn beeches were like mute giants overarching with their starry, 114 Memoirs of a Midget sky-hung boughs the dark, slim figure. What consciousness had they, I wonder, of those odd humans at their root>? "Alone! Here!" she returned. ''But no wonder. It's what you are all about." A peculiar elation sprang up in me at this none too intelligible remark. "I wonder, though," she added, "you are not frozen like — like a pebble, sitting there." "But I am," I said, laughing so'ftly. "It doesn't matter in me, because I'm so easy to thaw. You ought to know that. Oh, Miss Bowater, think if this were summer time and the dew and the first burning heat! Are you wrapped up? And shall we sit here, just — just for one dance of the Sisters: thou lost dove, Merope?" For there on high — and I had murmured the last words all but inaudibly to myself — there played the spangling Pleiads, clear above her head in the twig-swept sky. "What sisters?" she inquired, merely humouring me, perhaps. "The Six, Fanny, look ! You cannot see their Seventh — yet she is all that that is about." South to north I swept my hand across the powdery firmament. "And I myself trudge along down Watling Street; that's the Milky Way. I don't think, Fanny, I shall ever, ever be weaned. Please, may I call you that?" She frowned up a moment into the emptiness, hesitated, then — just like a white peacock I had once seen when a child from my godmother's ancient carriage as we rolled by an old low house with terraces smooth as velvet beneath its cedars — she disposed her black draperies upon the ground at a little distance, disclosing, in so doing, beneath their folds the moon-blanched flounces of her party gown. I gazed spellbound. I looked at the white and black, and thought of what there was within their folds, and of the heart within that, and of the spirit of man. Such was my foolish fashion, following idly like a butterfly the scents of the air, flitting on from thought to thought, and so missing the full richness of the one blossom on which I might have hovered. "Tell me some more," broke suddenly the curious voice into the midst of this reverie. "Well, there," I cried, "is fickle Algol; the Demon. And 115 Memoirs of a Midget over there where the Crab crawls, is the little Beehive between the Roses." "Prsesepe," drawled Fanny. "Yes," said I, unabashed, "the Beehive. And crane back your neck, Fanny — there's little Jack-by-the-Middle-Horse ; and far down, oh, far down, Berenice's Hair, which would have been Fanny Bo water's Hair, if you had been she." Even as I looked, a remote film of mist blotted out the in- finitesimal cluster. "And see, beyond the Chair," I went on, laughing, and yet exalted with my theme, "that dim in the Girdle is the Great Nebula — s-sh ! And on, on, that chirruping In- visible, that, Fanny, is the Midget. Perhaps you cannot even dream of her: but she watches." "Never even heard of her," said Fanny good-humouredly, withdrawing the angle of her chin from the Ecliptic. "Say not so, Horatia," I mocked, " there are more things . . ." "Oh, yes, I know all about that. And these cold, monotonous old things really please you? Personally, I'd give the whole meaningless scramble of them for another moon." "But your old glutton has gobbled up half of them al- ready." "Then my old glutton can gobble up what's left. Who taught you about them? And why," she scanned me closely, "why did you pick out the faintest; do you see them the best?" "I picked out the faintest because they were meant especially for me so that I could give them to you. My father taught me a little about them ; and your, father the rest." 'My father," echoed Fanny, her face suddenly intent. 'His book. Do you miss him? Mine is dead." "Oh, yes, I miss him," was the serene retort, "and so, I fancy, does mother." "Oh, Fanny, I am sorry. She told me — something like that." "You need not be. I suppose God chooses one's parents quite deliberately. Praise Him from Whom all blessings flow!" She smoothed out her black cloak over her ankles, raised her face again into the dwindling moonlight, and gently smiled at me. "I am glad I came, Midgetina, though it's suicidally cold. 'Pardi! on sent Dieu bien a son aise ici.' We are going to be great friends, aren't we?" Her eyes swept over me. "Would you like that?" 116 '• i Memoirs of a Midget "Friends," indeed! and as if she had offered me a lump of sugar. I gravely nodded. "But I must come to you. You can't come to me. No one has; except, perhaps, my mother — a little." "< >h, yes," she replied cautiously, piercing her eyes at me, "that is a riddle. You must tell me about your childhood. Not that I love children, or my own childhood either. I had enough of that to last me a lifetime. I shan't pass it on; though I promise you, Midgetina, if I ever do have a baby, I will anoint its little backbone with the grease of moles, bats, and dormice, rind make it like you. Was your mother " she began again, after a pause of reflection. "Are you sorry, I mean, you aren't — you aren't ?" Her look supplied the missing words. "Sorry that I am a midget, Fanny? People think I must be. But why? It is all I am, all I ever was. I am myself, inside; like everybody else ; and yet, you know, not quite like everybody else. I some- times think" — I laughed at the memory — "I was asking Dr Phelps about that. Besides, would you be — alone?" "Not when I was alone, perhaps. Still, it must be rather odd, Miss Needle-in-a-Haystack. As for being alone" — once again our owl, if owl it was, much nearer now, screeched its screech in the wintry woods — "I hate it!" "But surely," expostulated the wiseacre in me, "that's what we cannot help being. We even die alone, Fanny." "Oh, but I'm going to help it. I'm not dead yet. Do you ever think of the future?" For an instant its great black hole yawned close, but I shook my head. "Well, that," replied she, "is what Fanny Bowater is doing all the time. There's nothing," she added satirically, "so important, so imperative for teachers as learning. And you must learn your lesson, my dear, before you are heard it — if you want to escape a slapping. Every little donkey knows that." "I suppose the truth is," said I, as if seized with a bright idea, "there are two kinds of ambitions, of wants, I mean. We are all like those Chinese boxes ; and some of us want to live in the biggest, the outsidest we can possibly manage ; and some in the inmost one of all. The one," I added a little drearily, "no one can share." 117 Memoirs of a Midget "Quite, quite true," said Fanny, mimicking my sententious- ness, "the teeniest, tiniest, icklest one, which no mortal ingenuity has ever been able to open — and so discover the nothing inside. / know your Chinese Boxes !" "Poor Fanny," I cried, rising up and kneeling beside the ice- cold hand that lay on the frosty leaves. "All that I have shall help you." Infatuated thing; I stooped low as I knelt, and stroked softly with my own the outstretched fingers on which she was leaning. I might have been a pet animal for all the heed she paid to my caress. "Fanny," I whispered tragically, "will you please sing to me — if you are not frozenly cold? You remember — the Moon Song: I have never forgotten it; and only three notes, yet it sometimes wakes me at night. It's queer, isn't it, being you and me?" She laughed, tilting her chin ; and her voice began at once to sing, as if at the scarcely opened door of her throat, and a tune so plain it seemed but the words speaking: — " 'Twas a Cuckoo, cried 'cuck-oo' In the youth of the year; And the timid things nesting, Crouched, ruffled in fear; And the Cuckoo cried, 'cuck-oo/ For the honest to hear. One — two notes : a bell sound In the blue and the green ; 'Cuck-oo: cuck-oo: cuck-oo!' And a silence between. Ay, mistress, have a care, lest Harsh love, he hie by, And for kindness a monster To nourish you try — In your bosom to lie: 'Cuck-oo/ and a 'cuck-oo/ And 'cuck-oo!'" The sounds fell like beads into the quiet — as if a small child had come up out of her heart and gone down again ; and she 118 Memoirs of a Midget callous and unmoved. I cannot say why the clear, muted notes saddened and thrilled me so. Was she the monster? 1 had drawn hack, and stayed eyeing her pale face, the high cheek, the delicate straight nose, the darkened lips, the slim black eyebrows, the light, clear, unfathomable eyes reflecting the solitude and the thin brilliance of the wood. Yet the secret of herself remained her own. She tried in vain not to he disturbed at my scrutiny. "Well," she inquired at last, with motionless glance fixed on the distance. "Do you think you could honestly give me a testimonial, Miss Midget?" It is strange. The Sphinx had spoken, yet without much enlightenment. "Now look at me." I commanded. "If 1 went away, you couldn't follow. When you go away, you cannot escape from me. 1 can go back and — and be where I was." My own meaning was half -concealed from me; but a startled some- thing that had not been there before peeped out of those eyes so close to mine. "If," she said, "I could care like that too, yet wanted nothing, then I should be free too." "What do you mean?" said I, lifting my hand from the un- answering fingers. "I mean," she exclaimed, leaping to her feet, "that I'm sick to death of the stars and am going home to bed. Hateful, listen- ing old woods !" I turned sharp round, as if in apprehension that some secret hearer might have caught her remark. Hut Fanny stretched out her arms, and, laughing a foolish tune, in affected abandon- ment began softly to dance in the crisp leaves, quite lost to me again. So twirling, she set off down the path by which she had come trespassing. A physical exhaustion came over me. I watched her no more, but stumbled along, with unheeding eyes, in her wake. What had I not given, I thought bitterly, and this my reward. Thus solitary, I had gone only a little distance, and had reached the outskirts of the woods, when a far from indifferent Fanny came hastening hack to intercept me. And no wonder. She had remembered to attire herself be- comingly for her moonlight tryst, but had forgotten the door key. We stood looking at one another aghast, as, from eternity. I suppose, have all fellow-conspirators in danger of discovery. 119 Memoirs of a Midget It was I who first awoke to action. There was but one thing to be done, and, warning Fanny that I had never before attempted to unlatch the big front door of her mother's house, I set off resolutely down the hill. "You walk so slowly !" she said suddenly, turning back on me. "I will carry you." Again we paused. I looked up at her with an inextricable med- ley of emotions struggling together in my mind, and shook my head. "But why, why?" she repeated impatiently. "We could get there in half the time." "If you could fly, Fanny, I'd walk," I replied stubbornly. "You mean " and her cold anger distorted her face. "Oh, pride! What childish nonsense! And you said we were to be friends. Do you suppose I care whether ... ?" But the ques- tion remained unfinished. "I am your friend," said I, "and that is why I will not, I will not give way to you." It was hardly friendship that gleamed out of the wide eyes then. But mine the victory — a victory in which only a tithe of the spoils, unrecognized by the van- quished, had fallen to the victor. Without another word she turned on her heel, and for the rest of our dejected journey she might have been mistaken for a cross nurse trailing on pace for pace beside a rebellious child. My dignity was less ruffled than hers, however, and for a brief while I had earned my freedom. Arrived at the house, dumbly hostile in the luminous night, Fanny concealed herself as best she could behind the gate-post and kept watch on the windows. Far away in the stillness we heard a footfall echoing on the hill. "There is some one coming," she whispered, "you must hurry." She might, I think, have serpented her way in by my own little door. Where the head leads, the heart may follow. But she did not suggest it. Nor did I. I tugged and pushed as best I could, but the umbrella with which from a chair I at last managed to draw the upper bolt of the door was extremely cumbersome. The latch for a while resisted my efforts. And the knowledge that Fanny was fretting and fuming behind the gatepost hardly increased my skill. The house was sunken in quiet; Mrs Bowater apparently was sleeping 1 20 Memoirs of a Midget without her usual accompaniment ; only J Ienry shared my labours, and he sat moodily at the foot of the stairs, refusing to draw near until at the same moment Fanny entered, and he leapt out. Once safely within, and the door closed and bolted again, Fanny stood for a few moments listening. Then with a sigh and a curious gesture she bent herself and kissed the black veil that concealed my fair hair. "I am sorry, Midgetina," she whispered into its folds, "I was impatient. Mother wouldn't have liked the astronomy, you know. That was all. And I am truly sorry for — for — "My dear," I replied in firm, elderly tones, whose echo is in my ear to this very day; "My dear, it was my mind you hurt, not my feelings." With that piece of sententiousness I scrambled blindly through my Bates's doorway, shut the door behind me, and more disturbed at heart than I can tell, soon sank into the thronging slumber of the guilty and the obsessed. 121 Chapter Fourteen WHEN my eyes opened next morning, a strange, still glare lay over the ceiling, and I looked out of my window on a world mantled and cold with snow. For a while I forgot the fever of the last few days in watching the birds hopping and twittering among the crumbs that Mrs Bo water scattered out on the windowsill for my pleasure. And yet — their every virtue, every grace, Fanny Bowater, all were thine ! The very snow, in my girlish fantasy, was the fairness beneath which the unknown Self in her must, as I fondly believed, lie slumbering; a beauty that hid also from me for a while the restless, self- centred mind. How believe that such beauty is any the less a gift to its possessor than its bespeckled breast and song to a thrush, its sheen to a starling? It is a riddle that still baffles me. If we are all shut up in our bodies as the poets and the Scriptures say we are, then how is it that many of the loveliest seem to be all but uninhabited, or to harbour such dingy tenants ; while quite plain faces may throng with animated ghosts ? Fanny did not come to share my delight in the snow that morning. And as I looked out on it, waiting on in vain, hope flagged, and a sadness stole over its beauty. Probably she had not given the fantastic lodger a thought. She slid through life, it seemed, as easily as a seal through water. But I was not the only friend who survived her caprices. In spite of her warning about the dish-washing, Mr Crimble came to see her that after- noon. She was out. With a little bundle of papers in his hand he paused at the gate-post to push his spectacles more firmly on to his nose and cast a kind of homeless look over the fields before turning his face towards St Peter's. Next day, Holy Innocents', he came again ; but this time with more determina- tion, for he asked to see mc. To rid myself, as far as possible, of one piece of duplicity, I at once took the bull by the horns, and in the presence of Mrs Bowater boldly invited him to stay to tea. With a flurried 122 Memoirs of a Midget glance of the eye in her direction he accepted my invitation. "A cold afternoon, Mrs Bowater," he intoned. "The cup that cheers, the cup that cheers." My landlady left the conventions to take care of themselves; and presently he and I found ourselves positively tetc-a-tcte over her seed cake and thin bread and butter. But though we both set to work to make conversation, an absent intentness in his manner, a listening turn of his head, hinted that his thoughts were not wholly with me. "Are you long with us?" he inquired, stirring his tea. "I am quite, quite happy here," I replied, with a sigh. "Ah !" he replied, a little wistfully, taking a sip, "how few of us have the courage to confess that. Perhaps it flatters us to suppose we are miserable. It is this pessimism — of a mechani- cal, a scientific age — which we have chiefly to contend again -t. We don't often see you at St Peter's, I think?" "You wouldn't see very much of me, if I did come," I replied a little tartly. Possibly it was his "we" that had fretted me. It seemed needlessly egotistical. "On the other hand," I added, "wouldn't there be a risk of the congregation seeing nothing else?" Mr Crimble opened his mouth and laughed. "I wish," he said, with a gallant little bow, "there were more like you." "More like me, Mr Crimble?" "I mean," he explained, darting a glance at the furniture of my bedroom, whose curtains, to my annoyance, hung withdrawn, "I mean that — that you — that so many of us refuse to see the facts of life. To look them in the face, Miss M. There is nothing to fear." We were getting along famously, and I begged him to take some of Mrs Bowater's black currant jam. "But then, I have plenty of time," I said agreeably. "And the real difficulty is to get the facts to face me. Dear me, if only, now, I had some of Miss Bowater's brains." A veil seemed suddenly to lift from his face and as suddenly to descend again. So, too, he had for a moment stopped eating, then as suddenly begun eating again. "Ah, Miss Bowater! She is indeed clever; a — a brilliant young lady. The very life of a party, I assure you. And, yet, do you know, in parochial gatherings, try as I may, I 123 Memoirs of a Midget occasionally find it very difficult to get people to mix. The little social formulas, the prejudices. Yet, surely, Miss M., religion should be the great solvent. At least, that is my view." He munched away more vigorously, and gazed through his spectacles out through my window-blinds. "Mixing people must be very wearisome," I suggested, ex- amining his face. 1 'Wearisome,' " he repeated blandly. "I am sometimes at my wits' end. No. A curate's life is not a happy one." Yet he confessed it almost with joy. "And the visiting!" I said. And then, alas! my tongue began to run away with me. He was falling back again into what I may call his company voice, and I pined to talk to the real Mr Crimble, little dreaming how soon that want was to be sa- tiated. "I sometimes wonder, do you know, if religion is made difficult enough." "But I assure you," he replied, politely but firmly, "a true religion is exceedingly difficult. 'The eye of a needle' — we mustn't forget that." "Ah, yes," said I warmly; "that 'eye' will be narrow enough even for a person with my little advantages. I remember my mother's cook telling me, when I was a child, that in the old days, really wicked people if they wanted to return to the Church, had to do so in a sheet, with ashes on their heads, you know, and carrying a long lighted candle. She said that if the door was shut against them, they died in torment, and went to Hell. But she was a Roman Catholic, like my grandmother." Mr Crimble peered at me as if over a wall. "I remember, too," I went on, "one summer's day as a very little girl I was taken to the evening service. And the singing — bursting out like that, you know, with the panting and the yowling of the organ, made me faint and sick; and I jumped right out of the window." "Jumped out' of the window !" cried my visitor in conster- nation. "Yes, we were at the back. Pollie, my nursemaid, had put me up in the niche, you see; and I dragged her hand away. But I didn't hurt myself. The grass was thick in the church- 124 Memoirs of a Midget yard; I fell light, and I had plenty of clothes on. I rather enjoyed it — the air and the tombstones. And though I had my gasps, the 'eye' seemed big enough when I was a child. But afterwards — when I was confirmed — I thought of Hell a -odd deal. I can't see it so plainly now. Wide, low. and black, with a few demons. That can't be right." "My dear young lady!'' cried Mr I 'limbic, as if shocked, "is it wise to attempt it? It must be admitted, of course, that if we do not take advantage of the benefits bestowed upon us by Providence in a Christian community, we cannot escape His displeasure. The absence from His Love." "Yes," I said, looking at him in sudden intimacy, "I believe that." And I pondered a while, following up my own thoughts. "Maw you ever read Mr Clodd's Childhood of the World, Mr Crimble ?" By the momentary confusion of his face I gathered that he had not. "Mr Oodd? . . . Ah, yes, the writer on Primitive Man." "This was only a little book, for the young, you know. But in it Mr Clodd says, I remember, that even the most shocking old forms of religion were not invented by devils. They were 'Man's struggles from darkness to twilight.' What he meant was that no man loves darkness. At least," I added, with a sudden gush of re- membrances, "not without the stars." "That is exceedingly true," replied Mr Crimble. "And, talking of stars, what a wonderful sight it was the night before last, the whole heavens one spangle of diamonds! I was returning from visiting a sick parishioner, Mr Hubbins." Then it was his foot that Fanny and I had heard reverberating on the hill ! I hastily hid my face in my cup, but he appeared not to have noticed my con- fusion. He took another slice of bread and butter ; folded it care- fully in two, then peered up out of the corner of his round eye at me, and added solemnly : "Sick, I regret to say, no longer." "Dead ?" I cried from the bottom of my heart, and again looked at him. Then my eyes strayed to the silent scene beyond the window, silent, it seemed, with the very presence of poor Mr Hubbins. "I should not like to go to Hell in the snow," I said ruminatingly. Out of the past welled into memory an old ballad my mother had taught me :- 125 Memoirs of a Midget "This ae nighte, this ae nighte — Every nighte and allc, Fire and sleet and candle-lighte, And Christc receive thy saide !" "Beautiful, beautiful," murmured Mr Crimble, yet not without a trace of alarm in his dark eyes. "But believe me, I am not sug- gesting that Mr Hubbins His was, I am told, a wonderfully peaceful end." "Peaceful! Oh, but surely not in his mind, Mr Crimble. Surely one must be more alive in that last hour than ever — just when one's going away. At any rate," and I couldn't refrain a sigh, almost of envy, "I hope / shall be. Was Mr Hubbins a good man?" "He was a most regular church-goer," replied my visitor a little unsteadily ; "a family-man, one of our Sidesmen, in fact. He will be greatly missed. You may remember what Mr Ruskin wrote of his father : 'Here lies an entirely honest merchant.' Mr Rus- kin, senior, was, as a matter of fact, in the wine trade. Mr Hub- bins, I believe, was in linen, though, of course, it amounts to the same thing. But haven't we," and he cleared his throat, "haven't we — er — strayed into a rather lugubrious subject?" "We have strayed into a rather lugubrious world," said I. "Of course, of course ; but, believe me, we mustn't always think too closely. 'Days and moments quickly flying,' true enough, though hardly appropriate, as a matter of fact, at this particular season in the Christian year. But, on the other hand, 'we may make our lives sublime.' Does not yet another poet tell us that? Although, perhaps, Mr Hub " "Yes," I interposed eagerly, the lover of books in me at once rising to the bait, "but what do you think Longfellow absolutely ■meant by his 'sailor on the main' of life being comforted, you remember, by somebody else having been shipwrecked and just leaving footprints in the sand? I used to wonder and wonder. Does the poem imply, Mr Crimble, that merely to be born is to be shipwrecked? I don't think that can be so, because Longfellow was quite a cheerful man, wasn't he? — at least for a poet. For my part," I ran on, now thoroughly at home with my visitor, and on familiar ground, "I am sure I prefer poor Friday. Do you re- member how Robinson Crusoe described him soon after the rescue 126 Memoirs of a Midget from the savages as 'without Passions, Sullenness, or Designs,' even though he did, poor thing, 'have a hankering stomach after some of the Flesh'? Not that I mean to suggest," I added hastily, "that Mr Hubbins was in any sense a cannibal." "By no means," said Mr Crimble helplessly. "But there," and he brushed his knees with his handkerchief, "I fear you are too much of a reader for me, and — and critic. For that very reason I do hope, Miss M., you will sometimes contrive to pay a visit to St Peter's. Mother Church has room for all, you know, in her — about her footstool." He smiled at me very kindly. "And our organist, Mr Temple, has been treating us to some charmingly quaint old carols — at least the words seem a little quaint to a mod- ern ear. But I cannot boast of being a student of poetry. Parochial work leaves little time even for the classics : — "Odi profamim vulgus, et arceo. Favete Unguis . . ." He almost chirped the delightful words in a high, pleasant voice, but except for the first three of them, they were too many for my small Latin, and I afterwards forgot to test the aptness of his quotation. I was just about to ask him (with some little unwillingness) to translate the whole ode for me, when I heard Fanny's step at the door. I desisted. At her entry the whole of our conversation, as it hung about in Mrs Bowater's firelit little parlour, seemed to have become threadbare and meaningless. My visitor and I turned away from each other almost with relief — like Longfellow's ship- wrecked sailors, perhaps, at sight of a ship. Fanny's pale cheeks beneath her round beaver hat and veil were bright with the cold — for frost had followed the snow. She eyed us slowly, with less even than a smile in her eyes, facing my candles softly, as if she had come out of a dream. What- ever class of the community Mr Crimble may have meant to include in his Odi, the celerity with which he rose to greet her made it perfectly clear that it was not Miss Bowater's. Sin- smiled at the black sleeve, cuff, and signet ring outstretched towards her, but made no further advance. She brought him, too, a sad disappointment, simply that she would he unable to sing at his concert on the last night of the vear. At this 127 Memoirs of a Midget blow Mr Crimble instinctively folded his hands. He looked help- less and distressed. "But, Miss Bowater," he pleaded, "the printer has been wait- ing nearly two days for the names of your songs. The time is very short now." "Yes," said Fanny, seating herself on a stool by the fire and slowly removing her gloves. "It is annoying. I hadn't a vestige of a cold last night." "But indeed, indeed," he began, "is it wise in this severe weather ?" "Oh, it isn't the weather I mind," was the serene retort, "it's the croaking like a frog in public." "'A frog!'" cried Mr Crimble beguilingly, "oh, no!" But all his protestations and cajoleries were unavailing. Even to a long, silent glance so private in appearance that it seemed more courteous to turn away from it, Fanny made no dis- cernible response. His shoulders humped. He caught up his soft hat, made his adieu — a little formal, and hasty — and hurried off through the door to the printer. When his muffled footsteps had passed away, I looked at Fanny. "Oh, yes," she agreed, shrugging her shoulders, "it was a lie. I said it like a lie, so that it shouldn't deceive him. I detest all that wheedling. To come here two days running, after. . . . And why, may I ask, if it is beneath your dignity to dance to the parish, is it not beneath mine to sing? Let the silly sheep amuse themselves with their bleating. I have done with it all." She rose, folded her gloves into a ball and her veil over her hat, and once more faced her reflection in her mother's looking- glass. I had not the courage to tell her that the expression she wore on other occasions suited her best. "But surely," I argued uneasily, "things are different. If I were to dance, stuck up there on a platform, you know very well it would not be the dancing that would amuse them, but — just me. Would you care for that if you were — well, what I am?" "Ah, you don't know," a low voice replied bitterly, "you don't know. The snobs they are ! I have soaked in it for years, like a pig in brine. Boxed up here in your pretty little doll's 128 Memoirs of a Midget house, you suppose that all that matters is what you think of other people. J hit to he perfectly frank, you are out of the running, my dear. / have to get my own living, and all that matters is not what I think of other people hut what other people think of me. Do you suppose I don't know what he, in his heart, thinks of me — and all the rest of them? Well, I say, wait !" And she left me to my doll's house — a more helpless slave than ever. Not only one "star" the fewer, then, dazzled St Peter' s parish that New Year's Eve, but Fanny and I never again shared an hour's practical astronomy. Still, she would often sit and talk- to me, and the chain of my devotion grew heavy. Perhaps she, on her side, merely basked in the flattery of my imagination. It was for her a new variety of a familiar experience. Perhaps a curious and condescending fondness for me for a while sprang up in her — as far as that was possible, for, apart from her in- stinctive heartlessness, she never really accustomed herself to my physical shortcomings. I believe they attracted yet repelled her. To my lonely spirit she was a dream that remained a dream in spite of its intensifying resemblance to a nightmare. I realize now that she was desperately capricious, of a cat- like cruelty by nature, and so evasive and elusive that frequently I could not distinguish her soft, furry pads from her claws. But whatever her mood, or her treatment of me, or her la]' into a kind of commonness to which I deliberately shut my eyes, her beauty remained. Whomsoever we love becomes unique in that love, and I suppose we are responsible for what we give as well as for what we accept. The very memory of her beauty, when I was alone, haunted me as intensely as if she were present. Yet in her actual company, it made her in a sense unreal. So, often, it was only the ghost of her with whom I -at and talked. How sharply it would have incensed her to know it. When she came to me in my sleep, she was both paradise and seraph, and never fiddle entranced a Paganini as did her liquid lapsing voice my small fastidious ear. Yet, however much -he loved to watch herself in looking-glass or in her mind, and to observe her effects on others, she was not vain. But the constant, unbanishable thought of anything wearies 129 Memoirs of a Midget the mind and weakens the body. In my infatuation, I, too, was scarcely more than a ghost — a very childish ghost perhaps. I think if I could call him for witness, my small pasha in the train from Lyndsey would bear me out in this. As for what is called passion, the only burning of it I ever felt was for an outcast with whom I never shared so much as glance or word. Alas, Fanny, I suppose, was merely a brazen image. Long before the dark day of her departure — a day which stood in my thoughts like a barrier at the world's end — I had very foolishly poured out most of my memories for her profit and amusement, though so immobile was she when seated in a chair beside my table, or standing foot on fender at the chimney- piece, that it was difficult at times to decide whether she was listen- ing to me or not. What is more important, she told me in return in her curious tortuous and contradictory fashion, a good deal about herself, and of her childhood, which — because of the endless violent roarings of her nautical father, and the taciturn discipline of poor Mrs Bowater — filled me with compassion and heaped fuel on my love. And not least of these bonds was the secret which, in spite of endless temptation, I managed to withhold from her in a last instinctive loyalty to Mrs Bowater — the discovery that her own mother was long since dead and gone. She possessed more brains than she cared to exhibit to visitors like Dr Phelps and Mr Crimble. Even to this day I cannot believe that Mr Crimble even so much as guessed how clever she was. It was just part of herself, like the bloom on a plum. Hers was not one of those gesticulating minds. Her efforts only intensified her Fannyishness. Oh dear, how simple things are if only you leave them unexplained. Her very knowl- edge, too (which for the most part she kept to herself) was to me like finding chain armour when one is in search of a beating heart. She could shed it all, and her cleverness too, as easily as a swan water-drops. What could she not shed, and yet remain Fanny? And with all her confidences, she was extremely reticent. A lift of the light shoulders, or of the flat arched eyebrows, a sarcasm, a far-away smile, at the same time illuminated and obscured her talk. These are feminine gifts, and yet past my mastery. Perhaps for this reason I admired them the more in Fanny — just as, in reading my childhood's beloved volume, The Observing Eye, I had admired the crab's cuirass and the scorpion's 130 Memoirs of a Midget horny rings — because, being, after all, myself a woman, I faintly understood their purpose. Thus, when Fanny told me of the school she taught in; and of the smooth-haired drawing-master who attended it with his skill, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and of the vivacious and saturnine "Monsieur Crapaud," who, poked up in a room under the gables, lived in the house ; or of that other parish curate who was a nephew of the head-mistress's, the implacable Miss Stebbings, and who, apparently, preached Sunday after Sunday, with peculiar pertinacity, on such texts as "God is love" — when Fanny recounted to me these afflictions, graces, and mockeries of her daily routine as "literature'' mistress, I could as easily bestow on her the vivifying particulars she left out, as a painter can send his portraits to be framed. Once and again — just as I have seen a blackbird drop plumb from the upper boughs of a tree on a worm disporting itself in the dewy mould — once I did ask a question which produced in her one of those curious reactions which made her, rather than immaterial, an exceedingly vigilant image of her very self. "What will you do, Fanny, when you can't mock at him?" "Him?" she inquired in a breath. "The him !" I said. "What him ?" she replied. "Well," I said, stumbling along down what was a rather black and unfamiliar alley to me, "my father was not, I suppose, particularly wise in anything, but my mother loved him very much." "And my father," she retorted, in words so carefully pro- nounced that I knew they must be dangerous, "my father was a first mate in the mercantile marine when he married your landlady." "Well," I repeated, "what would you do, if — if you fell in love?" Fanny sat quite still, all the light at the window gently beating on her face, with its half-closed eyes. Her foot stirred, and with an almost imperceptible movement of her shoulder, she replied, "I shall go blind." I looked at her, dumbfounded. All the days of her company were shrivelled up in that small sentence. "Oh, Fanny," I whispered hopelessly, "then you know?" "'Know'?" echoed the smooth lips. 131 Memoirs of a Midget "Why, I mean," I expostulated, rushing for shelter fully as rapidly as my old friend the lobster must have done when it was time to change his shell, "I mean that's what that absurd little Frenchman is — 'Monsieur Crapaud.' " "Oh, no," said Fanny calmly, "he is not blind, he only has his eyes shut. Mine," she added, as if the whole light of the wintry sky she faced were the mirror of her prediction, "mine will be wide open." How did I know that for once the serene, theatrical creature was being mortally serious? 132 Chapter Fifteen I GREW a little weary of the beautiful snow in the days that followed my first talk with Mr Crimble, and fretted at the close air of the house. The last day of the year the wind was still in the north. It perplexed me that the pride which from my seed had sprung up in Fanny, and had prevented her from taking part in the parish concert, yet allowed her to attend it. She set off thickly veiled. Not even Air Crimble' s spectacles were likely to pierce her disguise. I had written a little letter the afternoon before and had myself handed it to Mrs Bowater with a large fork of mistletoe from my Christmas bunch. It was an invitation to herself and Fanny to sit with me and "see in" the New Year. She smiled at me over it — still her tranquil, though neglected self — and I was half-satisfied. Her best black dress was donned for the occasion. She had purchased a bottle of ginger wine, which she brought in with some glasses and placed in the middle of the red and black tablecloth. Its white-lettered, dark-green label "haunts me still." The hours drew on. Fanny returned from the concert — entering the room like a cloud of beauty. She beguiled the dwindling minutes of the year with mocking echoes of it. In a rich falsetto she repeated Mr Crimble's "few words" of sympathetic apology for her absence: "T must ask your indulgence, ladies and gentlemen, for a lamentable hiatus in our programme.'" She gave us Mi>s Willett's and Mr Bangor's spirited rendering of "Oh, that we two" ; and of the recitation which rather easily, it appeared, Mrs Bullace had been prevailed upon to give as an encore after her "Abt Vogler" : "The Lady's 'Yes,' " by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. And what a glance of light and fire she cast me when she came to stanza six of the poem : — "Lead her from the festive boards. Point her to the starry skies ! . . .' 133 Memoirs of a Midget And she imitated Lady Pollacke's niece's — Miss Oran's — 'cello obligato to "The Lost Chord," with a plangency that stirred even the soul of Henry as he lay curled up in my land- lady's lap. The black head split like a pomegranate as he yawned his disgust. At this Mrs Bowater turned her bony face on me, her hands on her knees, and with a lift of her eyes disclosed the fact that she was amused, and that she hoped her amusement would remain a confidence between us. She got up and put the cat out : and on her return had regained her solemnity. "I suppose," she said stiffly, staring into the sparkling fire that was our only illumination, "I suppose, poor creatures, they did their best : and it isn't so many years ago, Fanny, since you were as put-about to be allowed to sing at one of the church concerts as a bird is to hop out of its cage." "Yes," said Fanny, "but in this world birds merely hop out of one cage into another; though I suppose the larger are the more comfortable." This retort set Mrs Bowater 's countenance in an impassive mask — so impassive that every fitfully-lit photo- graph in the room seemed to have imitated her stare. "And, mother," added Fanny seductively, "who taught me to sing?" "The Lord knows," cried Mrs Bowater, with conviction, "/ never did." "Yes," muttered Fanny in a low voice, for my information, "but does He care?" I hastily asked Mrs Bowater if she was glad of to-morrow's New Year. As if in reply the kitchen clock, always ten minutes fast, began to chime twelve, half -choking at every stroke. And once more the soul of poor Mr Hubbins sorrowfully took shape in a gaze at me out of vacancy. "To them going downhill, miss," my landlady was replying to my question, "it is not the milestones are the pleasantest company — nor that the journey's then of much account until it is over. By which I don't mean to suggest there need be gloom. But to you and Fanny here — well, I expect the little that's the present for you is mostly wasted on the future." With that, she rose, and poured out the syrupy brown wine from the green bottle, reserving a remarkably little glass which she had rummaged out of her years' hoardings for me. Fanny herself, with musing head — her mockings over — was sitting drawn-up on a stool by the fire. I doubt if she was think- 134 Memoirs of a Midget ing. Whether or not, to my enchanted eye- some phantom within her seemed content merely to be her beauty. And in n there was a grace in her hody — the smooth shoulder, the poise 1 head that, because, perhaps, it was so transitory, seemed to re- semble the never-changing — that mimicry of the unknown which may be seen in a flower, in a green hill, even in an animal. It is as though, I do think, what we love most in this life must of necessity share two worlds. Faintly out of the frosty air was wafted the knelling of mid- night. I rose, stepped back from the firelight, drew the curtain, and stole a look into space. Away on the right flashed Sinus, and to east of him came gliding flat-headed Hydra with Alphard, the Red Bird, in his coil. So, for a moment in our history, I and the terrestrial globe were alone together. It seemed indeed that an intenser silence drew over reality as the earth faced yet one more fleeting revolution round her invisible lord and master. But no moon was risen yet. I turned towards the shape by the fire, and without her per- ceiving it, wafted kiss and prayer in her direction. Cold, care- less Fanny — further than Uranus. We were alone, for at firsl stroke of St Peter's Mrs Bowater had left the room and had opened the front door. She was smiling; but was she smiling, or was that vague bewitchingness in her face merely an un- meaning guile of which she was unaware? It might have been a mermaid sitting there in the firelight. The bells broke in on our stillness; and fortunately, since there was no dark man in the house to bring us luck, Henry, already disgusted with the snow and blacker in hue than any whiskered human I have ever seen, seized his opportunity, and was the first living creature to cross our threshold from one year into another. This auspicious event renewed our spirits which, in waiting, had begun to flag. From far away came a jangling murmur of shouting and instruments and bells, which showed that the rest of the parish was sharing our solemn vigil; and then, with me on my table between them, a hand of each clasping mine, Mrs Bowater, Fanny, and I, after sipping rich other's health, raised the strains of "Aul'd Fang Syne." There must have been Scottish blood in Mrs Bowater; she certainly made up for some little variation from the tune by a heartfelt pronunciation of the 135 Memoirs of a Midget words. Hardly had we completed this rite than the grand- father's clock in the narrow passage staidly protested its own rendering of eternity ; and we all — even Mrs Bowater — burst out laughing. "Good-night, Midgetina ; an immense happy New Year to you," whispered a voice to me about half an hour afterwards. I jumped out of bed, and peeped through my curtains. On some little errand Fanny had come down from her bedroom, and with a Paisley shawl over her shoulders stood with head and candle thrust in at the door. I gazed at her fairness. "Oh, Fanny !" I cried. "Oh, Fanny !" New Year's Day brought a change of weather. A slight mist rose over the fields, it began to thaw. A kind of listless- ness now came over Fanny, which I tried in vain to dispel. Yet she seemed to seek my company ; often to remain silent, and occasionally to ask me curious questions as if testing one answer against another. And one discovery I made in my efforts to keep her near me : that she liked being read- to. Most of the volumes in Mrs Bowater's small library were of a nautical character, and though one of them, on the winds and tides and seas and coasts of the world, was to console me later in Fanny's absence, the majority defied even my obstinacy. Fanny hated stories of the sea, seemed to detest Crusoe ; and smiled her slow, mysterious smile while she examined my own small literary treasures. By a flighty stroke of fortune, tacked up by an unskilled hand in the stained brown binding of a volume on Disorders of the Nerves, we discovered among her father's books a copy of Withering Heights, by Emily Bronte. The very first sentence of this strange, dwelling book, was a spell: "1801. — I have just returned from a visit to my landlord — the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with." . . . And when, a few lines farther on, I read : "He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows" — the apparition of who but Mr Crumble blinked at me out of the print, and the enchantment was complete. It was not only gaunt enormous Yorkshire with its fells and wastes of snow that seized on my imagination, not only that vast kitchen with its flagstones, green chairs, and firearms, but the mere music and aroma of 136 Memoirs of a Midget the words, "I beheld his black eyes" ; "a range of gaunt thorns" ; "a wilderness of crumbling griffins" ; "a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer" — they rang in my mind, echoed on in my dreams. And though in the wet and windy afternoons and evenings which Fanny and I thus shared, she, much more than poor Mr Crimble, resembled Heathcliff in being "rather morose," and in frequently expressing "an aversion to showing displays of feeling," she was mure attracted by my discovery than she condescended to confess. Jane Byre, she said, was a better story, "though Jane herself was a fool." What cared I? To me this book was like the kindling of a light in a strange house; and that house my mind. I gazed, watched, marvelled, and recognized, as I kneeled before its pages. But though my heart was torn, and my feelings were a little deranged by the scenes of violence, and my fancy was haunted by that stalking wolfish spectre, I took no part. I surveyed all with just that sense of aloofness and absorption with which as children Cathy and Heathcliff, barefoot in the darkness of the garden, had looked in that Sunday evening on the Lintons' crimson taper-lit drawing- room. If, in February, you put a newly gathered sprig of budding thorn into the fire; instantaneously, in the influence of the heat, it will break into bright-green tiny leaf. That is what Emily Bronte did for me. Not so for Fanny. In her "vapid listless- ness" she often pretended to yawn over Wuthering Heights, and would shock me with mocking criticism, or cry "Ah !" at the poignant passages. But I believe it was pure concealment. She was really playing a part in the story. I have, at any rate, never seen her face so transfigured as when once she suddenly looked up in the firelight and caught my eye fixed on her over the book. It was at the passage where Cathy — in her grand plaid silk frock, white trousers, and burnished shoes — returns to the dread- ful Grange ; and, "dismally beclouded," Heathcliff stares out at her from his hiding-place. " '1 le might,* '" I read on, " 'well skulk behind the settle, at beholding such a bright, graceful damsel enter the house. "Is Heathcliff not here?" she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing and staying indoors.' " 137 Memoirs of a Midget It was at this point that our eyes, as I say, Fanny's and mine, met. But she, bright, graceful damsel, was not thinking of me. "Do you like that kind of character, Fanny?" I inquired. My candle's flames gleamed lean and tiny in her eyes. "Whose?" she asked. "Why, Heathcliff's." She turned slowly away. "You take things so seriously, Midgetina. It's merely a story. He only wanted taming. You'll see by-and-by." But at that moment my ear caught the sound of footsteps, and when Mrs Bowater opened the door to con- template idle Fanny, the book was under my bed. As the day drew near for Fanny's return to her "duties," her mood brightened. She displayed before me in all their stages, the new clothes which Mrs Bowater lavished on her — to a degree that, amateur though I was in domestic economy, filled me with astonishment. I had to feign delight in these fineries — "Ah !" whispered I to each, "when she wears you she will be far, far away." I envied the very buttons, and indeed pestered her with entreaties. I implored her to think of me at certain hours; to say good-night to herself for me; to write day by day in the first of the evening; to share the moon: "If we both look at her at the same moment," I argued, "it will be next to looking at one another. You cannot be utterly gone: and if you see even a flower, or hear the wind. . . . Oh, I hope and hope you will be happy." She promised everything with smiling ease, and would have sealed the compact in blood if I had thought to cut my thumb for it. Thursday in Holy Week — then she would be home again. I stared at the blessed day across the centuries as a condemned man stares in fancy at the scaffold awaiting him ; but on mine hung all my hopes. Long evenings I never saw her at all ; and voices in the kitchen, when she came in late, suggested that my landlady had also missed her. But Fanny never lost her self-control even when she lost her temper; and I dared not tax her with neglecting me. Her cold looks almost suffocated me. I besought her to spend one last hour of the eve of her departure alone with me and with the stars in the woods. She promised. 138 Memoirs of a Midget At eleven she came home, and went straight up into her bedroom. I heard her Footsteps. She was packing. Then silence. I waited on until sick at heart I flung myself on my knees beside my bed and prayed that God would comfort her. Heathcliff had acquired a feeble pupil. The next afternoon she was gone. 139 Chapter Sixteen FOR many days my mind was an empty husk, yet in a constant torment of longing, daydream, despair, and self-reproaches. Everything I looked at had but one meaning — that she was not there. I did not dare to admit into my heart a hope of the future, since it would be treason to the absent. There was an ecstatic mournfulness even in the sight of the January sun, the greening fields, the first scarcely perceptible signals of a new year. And when one morning I awoke early and heard, still half in dream, a thrush in all but darkness singing of spring, it seemed it was a voice pealing in the empty courts of paradise. What ridicu- lous care I took to conceal my misery from Mrs Bowater. Hardly a morning passed but that I carried out in a bag the food I couldn't eat the day before, to hide it away or bury it. But such journeys were brief. I have read somewhere that love is a disease. Or is it that Life piles up the fuel, a chance stranger darts a spark, and the whole world goes up in smoke ? Was I happier in that fever than I am in this literary calm? Why did love for things without jealousy or envy fill me with delight, pour happiness into me, and love for Fanny parch me up, suck every other interest from my mind, and all but blind my eyes ? Is that true ? I cannot be sure : for to re- member her ravages is as difficult as to re-assemble the dismal phantoms that flock into a delirious brain. And still to be honest — there's another chance : Was she to blame? W r ould my mind have been at peace even in its solitary woe if she had dealt truly with me? Would any one believe it? — it never occurred to me to re- mind myself that it might be a question merely of size. Simply because I loved, I deemed myself lovable. Yet in my heart of hearts that afternoon I had been twitting Mr Crimble for saying his prayers! But even the heart is Phcenix-like. The outer world began to break into my desolation, not least successfully when after a week or two of absence there came a post card from Fanny to her mother 140 Memoirs of a Midget with a mere "love to M." scrawled in its top right-hand corner. It was as if a wine-glass of cold water had been poured down my back. It was followed by yet another little "shock." < >ne eve- ning, when she had carefully set down my bowl of rusk and milk, Mrs I'.owater took up her -land opposite to me, black as an image in wood. "You haven't been after your stars, miss, of late. It's moping you are. I suffered myself from the same greensick fan- tasticalities, when / was a girl. Not that a good result's any the better for a poor cause; but it was courting danger with your frail frame ; it was indeed.'' I smile in remembrance of the picture presented by that con- science-stricken face of mine upturned to that stark monitor — a monitor no less stark at this very moment though we are both many years older. "Yes, yes," she continued, and even the dun, fading photograph over her head might have paled at her accents. "I'm soliciting no divulgements ; she wouldn't have gone alone, and if she did, would have heard of it from me. But you must please remember, miss, I am her mother. And you will remember, miss, also," she added, with upper lip drawn even tighter, "that your care is my care, and always will be while you are under my roof — and after, please God." She soundlessly closed the door behind her, as if in so doing she were shutting up the whole matter in her mind for ever, as indeed she was, for she never referred to it again. Thunderbolts fall quietly at times. I sat stupefied. But as I examine that distant conscience, I am aware, first, of a faint flitting of the problem through my mind as to why a freedom which Mrs Bowater would have denied to Fanny should have held no dangers for me, and next, I realize that of all the emotions in conflict within me. humili- ation stood head and shoulders above the rest. Indeed I flushed all over, at the thought that never for one moment — then or since — had I paused to consider how, on that fateful midnight, Fanny could have left the house-door bolted behind her. My utter stu- pidity: and Fanny's ! All these weeks my landlady had known, and said nothing. The green gooseberries of my childhood were a far less effective tonic. But I lost no love for Mrs Bowater in this prodigious increase of respect. A far pleasanter interruption of my sick longings for the ab-ent one occurred the next morning. At a loss what to be reading ( for 141 Memoirs of a Midget Fanny had abstracted my Wuthering 'Heights and taken it away with her), once more shudderingly pushing aside my breakfast, I turned over the dusty, faded pile of Bowater books. And in one of them I discovered a chapter on knots. Our minds are cleverer than we think them, and not only cats have an instinct for phys- icking themselves. I took out a piece of silk twine from my drawer and — with Fanny's phantom sulking a while in neglect — set myself to' the mastery of "the ship boy's" science. I had learned for ever to distinguish between the granny and the reef (such is fate, this knot was also called the true lover's !), and was setting about the fisherman's bend, when there came a knock on the door — and then a head. It was Pollie. Until I saw her round, red, country cheek, and stiff Sunday hat, thus unexpectedly appear, I had almost forgotten how much I loved and had missed her. No doubt my landlady had been the dca ex machind that had produced her on this fine sunshine morning. Anyhow she was from heaven. Besides butter, a posy of winter jasmine, a crochet bedspread, and a var- nished arbour chair made especially for me during the winter eve- nings by her father, Mr Muggeridge, she brought startling news. There suddenly fell a pause in our excited talk. She drew out her handkerchief and a slow crimson mounted up over neck, cheek, ears, and brow. I couldn't look quite away from this delicious sight, so my eyes wandered up in admiration of the artificial corn- flowers and daisies in her hat. Whereupon she softly blew her nose and, with a gliding glance at the shut door, she breathed out her secret. She was engaged to be married. A trying, romantic vapour seemed instantly to gather about us, in whose hush I was curiously aware not only of Pollie thus suffused, sitting with her hands loosely folded in her lap, but of myself also, perched opposite to her with eyes in which curios- ity, incredulity, and even a remote consternation played upon her homely features. Time melted away, and there once more sat the old Pollie — a gawk of a girl in a pinafore, munching up green apples and re-plaiting her dull brown hair. Then, of course, I was bashfully challenged to name the happy man. I guessed and guessed to Pollie's ever-increasing gusto, and at last I dared my first unuttered choice : "Well, then, it must be Adam Waggett !" "Adam Waggett ! Oh, miss, him ! a nose like a winebottle." 142 Memoirs of a Midget It was undeniable. I apologized, and Pollie surrendered her future into my hands. "It's Bob Halibut, mi -." he whispered hoarsely. And instantaneously Boh Halibut's red head loomed louringly out at me. But I know little about husbands; and premonitions only impress us when they come true. Time was to prove that Pollie and her mother had made a prudent choice. Am I not now Mr Halibut's god-sister, so to speak? The wedding, said Pollie, was to be in the summer. "And oh, miss" — would I come? The scheming that followed! The sensitive draping of difficul- ties on either side, the old homesick longing on mine — to flee away now, at once, from this scene of my afflicted adoration. I almost hated Fanny forgiving me so much pain. Mrs Bowater was sum- moned to our council ; my promise was given ; and it was she who suggested that its being "a nice bright afternoon," Pollie should take me for a walk. But whither? It seemed a sheer waste of Pollie to take her to the woods. Thoughts of St Peter's, the nocturnal splendour in the cab, a hunger for novelty, the itch to spend money, and maybe a tinge of dare-devilry — without a moment's hesitation I chose the shops and the "town." Once more in my black, with two thick- nesses of veil canopying my head, as if I were a joint of meat in the Dog Days, I settled myself on Pollie's arm, and — in the full publicity of three o'clock in the afternoon — off we went. We chattered; we laughed ; we sniggled together like schoolgirls in amusement at the passers-by, in the strange, busy High Street. I devoured the entrancing wares in the shop windows — milliner, hairdresser and perfumer, confectioner; even the pyramids of jam jars and sugar-cones in the grocer's, and the soaps, syrups, and sponges of Mr Simpkins — P>eechwood's pharmaceutical chem- ist. Out of the sovereign which I had brought with me from my treasure-chest Pollie made purchases on my behalf. For Mrs Bowater, a muslin tie for the neck; for herself — after heated con- troversy — a pair of kid gloves and a bottle of frangipani ; and for me a novd. This last necessitated a visit to Mrs Stocks's Circulating Library. My hopes had been sel on Jane Eyre. Mrs Stocks regretted that the demand for this novel had always exceeded her supply: "What may be called the sensational style of fiction" (or was it H3 Memoirs of a Midget friction?) "never lays much on our hands." She produced, in- stead, and very tactfully, a comparatively diminutive copy of Miss Austen's Sense and Sensibility. It was a little shop-soiled; "But books keep, miss" ; and she let me have it at a reduced price. Her great shears severed the string. Pollie and I once more set clang- ing the sonorous bell at the door, and emerged into the sunlight. "Oh, Pollie," I whispered, "if only you could stay with me for ever !" This taste of "life" had so elated me that after fevered and silent debate I at last laughed out, and explained to Pollie that I wished to be "put down." Her breathless arguments against this foolhardy experiment only increased my obstinacy. She was compelled to obey. Bidding her keep some little distance behind me, I settled my veil, clasped tight my Miss Austen in my arms and set my face in the direction from which we had come. One after another the wide paving-stones stretched out in front of me. It was an extraordinary experience. I was openly alone now, not with the skulking, deceitful shades and appearances of night, or the quiet flowers and trees in the enormous vacancy of nature ; but in the midst of a town of men in their height — and walking along there: by myself. It was as if I had suddenly realized what as- tonishingly active and domineering and multitudinous creatures we humans are. I can't explain. The High Street, to use a good old phrase, "got up into my head." My mind was in such a whirl of excitement that full consciousness of what followed eludes me. The sun poured wintry bright into the house-walled gulf of a street that in my isolation seemed immeasurably vast and empty. I think my senses distorted the scene. There was the terrific glit- ter of glass, the clatter of traffic. A puff of wind whirled dust and grit and particles of straw into the air. The shapes of advancing pedestrians towered close above me, then, stiff with sudden atten- tion, passed me by. My legs grew a little numb and my brain con- fused. The strident whistling of a butcher's boy, with an empty, blood-stained tray over his shoulder, suddenly ceased. Saucer- eyed, he stood stock still, gulped and gaped. I kept on my course. A yelp of astonishment rent the air. Whereupon, as it seemed, from divers angles, similar boys seemed to leap out of the ground and came whooping and revolving across the street in my direction. And now the blood so hummed in my head that it was rather my 144 Memoirs of a Midget nerves than my ears which informed me of a steadily increasing murmur and trampling behind me. With extraordinary vividness I recall the vision of a gigantic barouche gliding along towards me in the shine and the dust; and seated up in it a high, pompous lady who at one moment with rigid urbanity inclined her head apparently in my direction, and at the next, her face displeased as if at an offensive odour, had sunk back into her cushions, oblivious not only of Beechwood but of the whole habitable globe. Simultaneously, I was aware, even as I hastened on, first thai the acquaintance whose salute she had acknowledged was Mr Crimble, and next, that with incredible rapidity he had wheeled himself about and had instantaneously transfixed his en- tire attention on some object in the window of a hatter's. Until this moment, as I say, a confused but blackening elation had filled my mind. But at sight of Mr (Trimble's rook-like stoop- ing shoulders I began to be afraid. My shoe stumbled against a jutting paving-stone. I almost fell. Whereupon the mute con- course at my heels — spreading tail of me, the Comet — burst into a prolonged squealing roar of delight. The next moment Pollie was at my side, stooping to my rescue. It was too late. One glance over my shoulder — and terror and hatred of the whole human race engulfed me like a sea. I struck savagely at Pollie's cotton-gloved hand. Shivering, with clenched, sticky teeth, I began to run. Why this panic? Who would have harmed me? And yet on the thronging faces which I had flyingly caught sight of through my veil there lay an expression that was not solely curiosity — a kind of hunger, a dog-like gleam. I remember one thin-legged, ferrety, red-haired lad in particular. Well, no matter. The comedy was brief, and it was Mrs Stocks who lowered the curtain. Attracted by all this racket and hubbub in the street, she was pro- truding her round head out of her precincts. Like fox to its hole, I scrambled over her wooden doorstep, whisked round her per- son, and fled for sanctuary into her shop. She hustled poor Pollie in after me, wheeled round on my pursuers, slammed the door in their faces, slipped its bolt, and drew down its dark blue blind. In the sudden quiet and torpor of this musty gloom I turned my hunted eyes and stared at the dark strip of holland that hid me from my pursuers. So too did Mrs Stocks. The round creature stood like a stone out of reach of the surf. Then she snorted. 145 Memoirs of a Midget "Them !" said she, with a flick of her duster. "A parcel of idle herrand boys. / know them: and no more decency than if you was Royalty, my dear, or a pickpocket, or a corpse run over in the street. You rest a bit, pore young thing, and compose yourself. They'll soon grow tired of themselves." She retired into the back part of her shop beyond the muslined door and returned with a tumbler of water. I shook my head. My sight pulsed with my heartbeats. As if congealed into a drop of poison, I stared and stared at the blind. "Open the door," I said. "I'd like to go out again." "Oh, miss ! oh, miss !" cried Pollie. But Mrs Stocks was of a more practical turn. After sur- veying my enemies from an upper window she had sent a neigh- bour's little girl for a cab. By the time this vehicle arrived, with a half-hearted "Boo!" of disappointment, the concourse in the street had all but melted away, and Mrs Stocks's check duster scattered the rest. The cab-door slammed, the wheels ground on the kerbstone, my debut was over. I had been but a nine minutes' wonder. 146 Chapter Seventeen WE jogged on sluggishly up the hill, and at last, in our velvety quiet, as if at a preconcerted signal, Pollie and I turned and looked at one another, and broke into a long, mirthless peal of laughter — a laughter that on her side presently threatened to end in tears. I left her to recover her- self, fixing my festering attention on her engagement ring — two hearts in silver encircled by six sky-blue turquoises. And in the silly, helpless fashion of one against the world, 1 plotted revenge. The cab stopped. There stood the little brick house, wholly unaffected by the tragic hours which had passed since we had so gaily set out from it. I eyed it with malice and disgust as I reascended my Bateses and preceded Pollie into the passage. Once safely within, I shrugged my shoulders and explained to Mrs Bowater the phenomenon of the cab with such success that I verily believe she was for the moment convinced that her lodger was one of those persons who prosper in the attentions of the mob — Royalty, that is, rather than pickpockets or corpses run over in the street. With my new muslin tie adorning her neck, Mrs Bowater took tea with us that afternoon, but even Pollie's imaginative version of our adventures made no reference to the lady in the carriage, nor did she share my intense conjecture on what Mr ( rimble can have found of such engrossing interest in the halter's. Was it that the lady had feigned not to have seen me entirely for my sake; and that Mr Crimble had feigned not to have seen me entirely for his? I was still poring over this problem in bed that night when there came a tap at my door. It was Pollie. She had made her way downstairs to assure herself that I was safe and comfortable. "And oh, miss," she whispered, as she bade me a final good-night, "you never see such a lovely little bedroom as Mrs Bowater have put me into — fit for a princess, and yet just quite plain! Bob's been thinking about furniture too." 147 Memoirs of a Midget So I was left alone again with forgotten Fanny, and that night I dreamed of her. Nothing to be seen but black boiling waves flinging their yeasty, curdling crests into the clouds, and every crest the face of my ferrety "herrand-boy." And afloat in the midst of the welter beneath, a beloved shape whiter than the foam, with shut eyes, under the gigantic stoop of the water. Who hangs these tragic veils in the sleeping mind? Who was this I that looked out on them? I awoke, shuddering, breathed a blessing — disjointed, nameless; turned over, and soon was once more asleep. My day's experiences in the High Street had added at least twenty-four hours to my life. So much a woman of the world was I becoming that when, after Pollie's departure, a knock announced Mr Crimble, I greeted him with a countenance guile- less and self-possessed. With spectacles fixed on me, he stood nervously twitching a small bunch of snowdrops which he as- sured me were the first of the New Year. I thanked him, re- marked that our Lyndsey snowdrops were shorter in the stalk than these, and had he noticed the pale green hieroglyphs on the petals? "In the white, dead nettle you have to look underneath for them : tiny black oblongs ; you can't think how secret it looks !" But Mr Crimble had not come to botanize. After answering my inquiry after the health of Mrs Hubbins, he suddenly sat down and announced that the object of his visit was to cast himself on my generosity. The proposal made me uncomfortable, but my timid attempt to return to Mrs Hubbins was unavailing. "I speak," he said, "of yesterday's atrocity. There is no other word for it, and inasmuch as it occurred within two hundred yards of my own church, indeed of my mother's house, I cannot disclaim all responsibility for it." Nor could I. But I wished very heartily that he had not come to talk about his share. "Oh," said I, as airily as I could, "you mean, Mr Crimble, my little experience in the High Street. That was nothing. My attention was so much taken up with other things that I did not get even so much as a glimpse of St Peter's. So you see " "You are kindness itself," he interrupted, with a rapid inser- tion of his forefinger between his neck and his clerical collar, "but the fact is," and he cast a glance at me as if with the 148 Memoirs of a Midget whites of his eyes, "the fact is, I was myself a scandalized witness of the occurrence. llelieve me, it cannot have hurt your sensitive feelings more than — than it hurt mine." "But honestly, Mr Crimble," 1 replied, glancing rather help- lessly round the room, "it didn't hurt my feelings at all. You don't feel much, you know, when you are angry. It was just as I should have foreseen. It is important to know where we are, isn't it; and where other people are? And boys will be boys, as Mrs Uowater says, and particularly, I suppose, er- rand boys. What else could I expect? It has just taught me a very useful lesson — even though I didn't much enjoy learning it. If I am ever to get used to the world (and that is a kind of duty, Mr Crimble, isn't it?), the world must get used to me. Perhaps if we all knew each other's insides — our thoughts and feelings, I mean — everybody would be as peculiar there — • inside, you know — as I am, outside. I'm afraid this is not making myself very clear." And only a few weeks ago I had been bombarding Dr Phelps with precisely the opposite argument. That, I suppose, is what is meant by being "deceitful on the weights." Mr Crimble opened his mouth, but I continued rapidly, "You see, I must be candid about such things to myself and try not to — to be silly. And you were merely going to be very kind, weren't you ? I am a midget, and it's no good denying it. The people that hooted me were not. That's all ; and if there hadn't been so many of them, perhaps I might have been just as much amused, if not even shocked at them, as they at me. We think our own size, that's all, and I'm perfectly certain." I nodded at him emphatically, "I'm perfectly certain if poor Mr Nubbins were here now, he'd — he'd bear me out." Bear me out — the words lingered on in my mind so distinctly, and conveyed so peculiar a picture of Mr Hubbins's spirit and myself, that I missed the beginning of my visitor's reply. "But I assure you," he was saying, "it is not merely that." The glint of perspiration was on his forehead. "In the Almighty's sight all men are equal. Appearances are nothing. And some of us perhaps are far more precious by very reason of — of passing afflictions, and " "My godmother," I interposed, "said exactly that in a letter to me a few months ago. Not that I accept the word, Mr Crimble. 149 Memoirs of a Midget the 'afflictions,' I mean. And as for appearances, why they are everything, aren't they?" I gave him as cordial an imitation of a smile as I could. "No, no, no; yes, yes, yes," said Mr Crimble rapidly. "But it was not of that, not of that in a sense that I was speaking. What I came to say this afternoon is this. I grant it ; I freely confess it ; I played the coward ; morally rather than physically, perhaps, but still the coward. The — the hideous barbarity of the proceeding." He had forgotten me. His eyes were fixed on the scene in his memory. He was once more at the hatter's window. There fell a painful pause. I rose and sat down again. "But quite, quite honestly," I interposed faintly,' "they did me no harm. They were only in- quisitive. What could you have done? Why, really and truly," I laughed feebly, "they might have had to pay, you know. It was getting — getting me cheap !" His head was thrown back, so that he looked under his spectacles at me, as he cried hollowly : "They might have stoned you." "Not with those pavements." "But I was there. I turned aside. You saw me?" What persuaded me to be guilty of such a ridiculous quibble, I cannot think. Anything, perhaps, to ease his agitation: "But honestly, honestly, Mr Crimble," I murmured out at him, "I didn't see you see me." "Oh, ah! a woman's way!" he adjured me desperately, turn- ing his head from one side to the other. "But you must have known that I knew you knew I had seen you, you must confess that. And, well . . . as I say, I can only appeal to your generos- ity." "But what can I do? I'm not hurt. If it had been the other way round — you scuttling along, I mean ; I really do believe / might have looked into the hatter's. Besides, when we were safe in the cab. ... I mean, I'm glad! It was experience: oh, and past. I loved it and the streets, and the shops, and all those grinning, gnashing faces, and even you. ... It was wildly exciting, Mr Crimble, can't you see? And now" — I ended tri- umphantly — "and now I have another novel !" At this, suddenly overcome, I jumped up from my chair and ran off into my bedroom as if in search of the book. The 150 Memoirs of a Midget curtains composed themselves behind me. In this inner quiet- ness, this momentary release, I stood there, erect beside the bed — without a thought in my head. And 1 began slowly, silently — to laugh. Handkerchief to my lips, I laughed and laughed — not exactly like Pollie in the cab, but because apparently some infinitely minute being within me had risen up at remembrance of the strange human creature beyond the curtains who had suddenly before my very eyes seemed to have expanded and swollen out to double his size. Oh, what extraordinary things life was doing to me. How can I express myself? For that pip of a moment I was just an exquisite icicle of solitude — as if I had never been born. Yet there, under my very nose, was my bed, my glass, my hair-brushes and bottles — "Here we all are, Miss M." — and on the other side of the curtains. . . . And how contemptuous I had been of Pollie's little lapse into the hysterical ! I brushed my handkerchief over my eyes, tranquillized my features, and sallied out once more into the world. "Ah, here it is," I exclaimed ingenuously, and lifting my Sense and Sensibility from where it lay on the floi my table, I placed it almost ceremoniously in Mr Crimble's hands. A visible mist of disconcertion gathered over his face. He looked at the book, he opened it, his eye strayed down the title-page. "Yes, yes," he murmured, "Jane Austen — a pocket edition. Macaulay, I remember . . ." He closed-to the covers again, drew finger and thumb slowly down the margin, and then leaned forward. "But you were asking me a question. What could I have done? Frankly I don't quite know. But I might have protected you, driven the rabble off, taken you The Good Shepherd. But there, in short," and the sun of relief peered through the glooms of conscience, "I did nothing. That was my failure. And absurd though it may seem, I could not rest until, as a matter of fact, I had unbosomed myself, confessed, knowing you would understand." His tongue came to a stand- still. "And when," he continued in a small, constrained voice, and with a searching, almost appealing glance, "when Miss Bozvater returns, you will, I hope, allow me to make amends, to prove She would never — for — forgive. . . ." The fog that had been his became mine. In an extravagance of attention to every syllable of his speech as it died away uncompleted in the little listening room I mutely surveyed him. I5i Memoirs of a Midget Then I began to understand, to realize where my poor little "generosity" was to come in. "Ah," I replied at last, forlornly, our eyes in close communion, "she won't be back for months and months. And anyhow, she wouldn't, I am sure, much mind, Mr Crimble." "Easter," he whispered. "Well, you will write, I suppose," and his eye wandered off as if in search of the inkpot, "and no doubt you will share our — your secret." There was no vestige of interrogation in his voice, and yet it was clear that what he was suggesting I should do was only and exactly what he had come that afternoon to ask me not to do. Why, surely, I thought, examining him none too complimentarily, I am afraid, he was merely playing for a kind of stalemate. What funny, blind alleys love leads us into. "No," I said solemnly. "I shall say nothing. But that, I suppose, is because I am not so brave as you are. Really and truly, I think she would only be amused. Everything amuses her." It seemed that we had suddenly reassumed our natural dimen- sions, for at that he looked at me tinily again, and with the suggestion, to which I was long accustomed, that he would rather not be observed while so looking. On the whole, ours had been a gloomy talk. Nevertheless, theft, not on my generosity, but I hope on my understanding, he reposed himself, and so reposes to this day. When the door had closed behind him, I felt far more friendly towards Mr Crimble than I had felt before. Even apart from the Almighty, he had made us as nearly as he could — equals. I tossed a pleasant little bow to his snowdrops, and, catching sight of Mr Bowater's fixed stare on me, hastily included him within its range. Mr Crimble, Mrs Bowater informed me the following Sunday evening, lived with an aged mother, and in spite of his socia- bility and his "fun," was a lonely young man. He hadn't, my landlady thought, yet seen enough of the world to be of much service to those who had. "They," and I think she meant clergymen in general, as well as Mr Crimble in particular, "live a shut-in, complimentary life, and people treat them according. Though, of course, there's those who have seen a bit of trouble and cheeseparing themselves, and the Church is the Church when all's said and done." 152 Memoirs of a Midget And all in a moment I caught my first real glimpse of the Church — no more just a number <>i' St Peterses than I was so many "organs,"' or Beechwood was so many errand hoy-, or, for that matter, England so many counties. It was an idea; my attention wandered. "But he was very anxious ahout the concert," I ventured to protest. "I've no douht," said .Mrs Bowater shortly. "Bui then," I remarked with a sigh, "Fanny seems to make friends wherever she goes." "It i>n't the making." replied her mother, "hut the keeping." The heavy weeks dragged slowly by, and a one-sided corre- spondence is like posting letters into a dream. My progress with Mis-, Austen was slow, because she made me think and argue with her. Apart from her, I devoured every fragment of print I could lay hands on. For when fiction palled I turned to facts, mastered the sheepshank, the running bowline, and the figure-of- eight; and wrestled on with my sea-craft. It was a hard task, and I thought it fair progress if in thai I covered half a knot a day. Besides which, Mrs Bowater sometimes played with me at solitaire, draughts, or cards. In these she was a martinet, and would appropriate a fat pack at Beggar-my-neighbour with in- finite gusto. How silent stood the little room, with just the click of the cards, the simmering of the kettle on the hob, and Mrs Bowater's occasional gruff "Four to pay." We might have heen on a desert island. I must confess this particular game soon grew a little wearisome; hut I played on. thinking to please my partner, and that she had chosen it for her own sake. Until one evening, with a stilled sigh, she murmured the word, Crihhage ! I was shuffling my own small pack at the moment, and paused, my eyes on their hacks, in a rather wry amuse- ment. But Fate has pretty frequently so turned the tables on me; and after that, "One for his nob," sepulchrally hroke the night-silence of Beechwood far more often than "Four to pay." Not all my letters to Fanny went into the post. My landlady looked a little askance at them, and many of the unposted one^ were scrawled, if possihle in moonlight, after she had gone to bed. To judge from my recollection of other letters written in my young days, I may be thankful that Fanny was one of those 153 Memoirs of a Midget practical people who do not hoard the valueless. I can still recall the poignancy of my postscripts. On the one hand : "I beseech you to write to me, Fanny, I live to hear. Last night was full moon again. I saw you — you only in her glass." On the other : "Henry has been fighting. There is a chip out of his ear. Nine centuries nearer now ! And how is 'Monsieur Crapaud' ?" 154 Wanderslore Chapter Eighteen AT last there came a post which brought me, not a sermon from Miss Fenne, nor gossip from Pollie, but a message from the Islands of the Blest. All that evening and night it lay unopened under my pillow. 1 was saving it up. And never have I passed hours so studious yet so barren of result. It was the end of February. A sudden hurst of light and sunshine had fallen on the world. There were green shining grass and new-fallen lambs in the meadows, and the almond tree beyond my window was in full, leafless bloom. As for the larks, they were singing of Fanny. The next morning early, about seven o'clock, her letter folded up in its small envelope in the bosom of my cloak, I was out of the house and making my way to the woods. It was the clear air of daybreak and only the large stars shook faint and silvery in the brightening sky. Frost powdered the ground and edged the grasses. But now tufts of primroses were in blow among the withered mist of leaves. I came to my "observatory" just as the first beams of sunrise smote on its upper boughs. Yet even now I deferred the longed-for moment and hastened on between the trees, beech and brooding yew, by what seemed a faint foot-track, and at last came out on a kind of rising on the edge of the woods. From this green eminence for the first time I looked straight across its desolate garden to Wanderslore. It was a long, dark, many-windowed house. It gloomed sullenly back at me beneath the last of night. From the alarm calls of the blackbirds it seemed that even so harmless a trespasser as I was a rare spectacle. A tangle of brier and bramble bushed frostily over its grey stone terraces. Nearer at hand in the hollow stood an angled house, also of stone — and as small com- pared with Wanderslore as a little child compared with its mother. It had been shattered at one corner by a falling tree, whose bole still lay among the undergrowth. The faint track I was 157 Memoirs of a Midget following led on, and apparently past it. Breathless and trium- phant, I presently found myself seated on a low mossy stone beside it, monarch of all I surveyed. With a profound sigh I opened my letter : — "burn this letter, and show the other to m. "Dear Midgetina, — Don't suppose, because I have not written, that Fanny is a monster, though, in fact, she is. I have often thought of you — with your stars and knick-knacks. And of course your letters have come. My thanks, I can't really answer them now because I am trying at the same time to scribble this note and to correct 'composition' papers under the very eyes of Miss Stebbings — the abhorred daughter of Argus and the eldest Gorgon. Dear me, I al- most envy you, Midgetina. It must be fun to be like a tiny, round- headed pin in a pin-cushion and just mock at the Workbox. But all things in moderation. "When the full moon came last I remembered our vow. She was so dazzling, poor old wreck. And I wondered, as I blinked up at her, if you would not some clay vanish away altogether — unless you make a fortune by being looked at. I wish I could. Only would they pay enough? That is the question. "What I am writing about now is not the moon, but — don't be amused ! — a Man. Not Monsieur Crapaud, who is more absurd than ever ; but some one you know, Mr Crimble. He has sent me the most alarming letter and wants me to marry him. It is not for the first time of asking, but still a solemn occasion. Mother once said that he was like a coquette — all attention and no intention. Sad to say, it is the other way round. M., you see, always judges by what she fears. / by what this Heart tells me. "Now I daren't write back to him direct (a) because I wish just now to say neither Yes nor No; (b) because a little delay will benefit his family pride; (c) because it is safer not to — he's very careless and I might soon want to change my mind; (d) because that's how my fancy takes me; and (e) because I love you exceedingly and know you will help me. "When no answer comes to his letter, he will probably dare another pilgrimage to Beechwood Hill, if only to make sure that I am not in my grave. So I want you to tell him secretly that / have received Jus letter and that T am giving it my earnest attention — let alone my prayers. Tell me exactly how he takes this answer; then 1 will write to you again. I am sure, Midgetina, in some previous life you must 158 Memoirs of a Midget have lived in the tiny rooms in the Palace at Mantua — you are a born intrigante. "/// my bedroom, 11 p.m. — A scheme is in my mind, but it is not yet in bloom, and you may infer from all this that I don't care. Often I wish this were so. I sat in front of my eight inches of grained looking-glass last night till it seemed some god(dcss) must intervene. But no. -My head was dark and empty. 1 could hear Mr Oliphant cajoling with his violin in the distance — as if music had charms. Oh, dear, they give you life, and leave you to ask, Why. You seem to be perfectly contented in your queer little prim way with merely asking. But Fanny Bowater wants an answer, or she will make one up. Meanwhile, search for a scrap of magic mushroom, little sister, and come nearer ! Some day I will tell you even more about myself ! Meanwhile, believe me, petitissimost M., your affec. — F. "PS.— Bum this. "PPS. — What I mean is, that he must be made to realize that I will not and cannot give him an answer before I come home — unless he hears meanwhile. "Burn this: the other letter is for show purposes." Fanny's "other" was more brief: — "Dear Midgettna, — It is delightful to have your letters, and I am ashamed of myself for not answering them before. But I will do so the very moment there is a free hour. Would you please ask mother with my love to send me some handkerchiefs, some stockings, and some soap? My first are worn with weeping, my second with sitting still, and my third is mottled — and similarly affects the complexion. But Easter draws near, and I am sure I must long to lie home. Did you tell mother by any chance of your midnight astronomy lesson? It has been most useful when all other baits and threats have failed to teach the young idea how to shoot. Truly a poet's way of putting it. Is Mr Crimble still visiting his charming parishioner? "I remain, "Yours afree'ly. "Fanny Bowater." Slowly, self-conscious word by word, lingering here and there, I read these letters through — then through again. Then I lifted my eyes and stared for a while over my left shoulder at empty Wanderslore. A medley of emotions strove for mastery, and as if to reassure herself the "tiny, round-headed pin" ki>sed the 159 Memoirs of a Midget signature, whispering languishingly to herself in the great garden : "I love you exceedingly. Oh, Fanny, I love you exceedingly," and hid her eyes in her hands. The note-paper was very faintly scented. My imagination wandered off I know not where ; and returned, elated and dejected. Which the more I know not. Then I folded up the secret letter into as small a compass as I could, dragged back a loose, flat stone, hid it away in the dry crevice beneath, and replaced the stone. The other I put into my silk bag. I emerged from these labours to see in my mind Mrs Bowater steadfastly regarding me, and behind her the shadowy shape of Mr Crimble, with I know not what of entreaty in his magni- fied dark eyes. I smiled a little ruefully to myself to think that my life was become like a pool of deep water in which I was slowly sinking down and down. As if, in sober fact, there were stones in my pocket, or leaden soles to my shoes. It was more like reading a story about myself, than being myself, and what was , to be the end of it all? I thought of Fanny married to Mr Crimble, as my mother was married to my father. How dark and uncomfortable a creature he looked beside Fanny's grace and fairness. And would Mrs Crimble sit in an arm-chair and watch Fanny as Fanny had watched me ? And should I be asked to tea? I was surprised into a shudder. Yet I don't think there would have been any wild jealousy in my heart — even if Fanny should say, Yes. I could love her better, perhaps, if she would give me a little time. And what was really keeping her back? Why did every word she said or wrote only hide what she truly meant? So, far from mocking at the Workbox, I was only helplessly examining its tangled skeins. Nor was I criticizing Fanny. To help her — that was my one burning desire, to give all I had, take nothing. In a vague, and possibly priggish, fashion, I knew, too, that I wanted to help her against herself. Her letter (and perhaps the long waiting for it) had smoothed out my old excitements. In the midst of these musings memory suddenly alighted on the question in the letter which was to be shown to Mrs Bowater: about the star-gazing. There was no need for that now. But the point was, had not Fanny extorted a promise from me not to tell her mother of our midnight adventure? 1 60 Memoirs of a Midget It seemed as though without a shred of warning the fair face had drawn close in my consciousness and was looking at me low and fixedly, like a snake in a picture. Why, it was like cheating at cards! Fascinated and repelled, I sank again into reverie. "No, no, it's cowardly, Fanny," cried aloud a voice in the midst of this inward argument, as startling as if a Granger had addressed me. The morning was intensely still. Sunbeams oul of the sky now silvered the clustered chimney shafts of Wanderslore. Where shadow lay, the frost gloomed wondrously blue on the dishevelled terraces; where sun, a thin smoke of vapour was ascending into the air. The plants and hushes around me were knohhed all over with wax-green buds. The enormous trees were faintly coloured in their twigs. A sun- heetle staggered out among the pebbles at my feet. I glanced at ni)- hands ; they were coral pink with the cold. "I love you exceedingly — exceedingly," I repeated, though this time I knew not to whom. So saying, and, even as I said it, realizing that the exceedingly was not my own, and that I must he intelligent even if I was sentimental, I rose from my stone, and turned to go hack. I thus faced the worn, small, stone house again. Instantly I was all attention. A curious feeling came over me, familiar, ye1 eluding rememhrance. It meant that I must he vigilant. Cautiously I edged round to the other side of the angled wall, where lay the fallen tree. Hard, dark buds showed on it- yet living fringes. Rather than clamber over its sodden bole, I skirted it until I could walk beneath a lank, upthrust bough. At every few steps I shrank in and glanced around me, then fixed my eyes — as I had learned to do by my stream-side or when star-gazing — on a single object, in order to mark what was passing on the outskirts of my field of vision. Nothing. I was alone in the garden. A robin, with a light flutter of wing, perched to eye me. A string of rooks cawed across the sky. Wanderslore emptily stared. If, indeed, I was being watched, then my watcher was no less circumspect than I. Soon I was skirting the woods again, and had climbed the green knoll by which I had descended into the garden. I wheeled sharply, searching the whole course of my retreat. Nothing. When I opened my door, Mrs Bowater and Henrv seemed 161 Memoirs of a Midget to be awaiting me. Was it my fancy that both of them looked censorious ? Absently she stood aside to let me pass to my room, then followed me in. "Such a lovely morning, Mrs Bowater," I called pleasantly down from my bedroom, as I stood taking off my cloak in front of the glass, "and not a soul to be seen — though" (and my voice was better under command with a hairpin between my teeth) ; "I wouldn't have minded if there had been. Not now." "Ah," came the reply, "but you must be cautious, miss. Boys will be boys ; and," the sound tailed away, "men, men." I heard the door open and close, and paused, with hands still lifted to my hair, prickling cold all over at this strange behaviour. What could I have been found out in now ? Then a voice sounded seemingly out of nowhere. "What I was going to say, miss, is — A letter's come." With that I drew aside the curtain. The explanation was simple. Having let Henry out of my room, in which he was never at ease, Mrs Bowater was still standing, like a figure in waxwork, in front of her chiffonier, her eyes fixed on the window. They then wheeled on me. "Mr Bowater," she said. I was conscious of an inexpressible relief and of the pro- foundest interest. I glanced at the great portrait. "Mr Bowater?" I repeated. "Yes," she replied. "Buenos Ayres. He's broken a leg; and so's fixed there for the time being." "Oh, Mrs Bowater," I said, "I am sorry. And how terribly sudden." "Believe me, my young friend," she replied musingly, "it's never in my experience what's unprepared for that finds us least expecting it. Not that it was actually his leg was in my mind." What was chiefly in my selfish mind was the happy con- viction that I had better not give her Fanny's letter just then. "I do hope he's not in great pain," was all I found to say. She continued to muse at me in her queer, sightless fashion, almost as if she were looking for help. "Oh, dear me, miss," the poor thing cried brokenly, "how should your young mind feel what an old woman feels: just grovelling in the past?" 162 Memoirs of a Midget She was gone; and, feeling very uncomfortable in my humilia- tion, I sat down and stared — at "the workbox." Why, why indeed, I thought angrily, why .should 1 be responsible? Well, I suppose it's only when the poor fish -sturgeon or sticklehack — struggles, that he really knows he's in the net. 163 Chapter Nineteen ONE of the many perplexing problems that now hemmed me in was brushed away by Fortune that afternoon. Between gloomy bursts of reflection on Fanny's, Mr Crimble's, Mrs Bowater's, and my own account, I had been reading Miss Austen ; and at about four o'clock was sharing Chapter XXIII. with poor Elinor : — "The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind her to everything but her beauty and good nature, but the four succeeding years — years which, if rationally spent, give such improvements to the understanding — must have opened her eyes to her defects of Education, which the same period of time, spent on her side in in- ferior society and more frivolous pursuits . . ." I say I was reading this passage, and had come to the words — "and more frivolous pursuits," when an unusually imperative rat-tat-tat fell upon the outer door, and I emerged from my book to discover that an impressive white-horsed barouche was drawn up in the street beyond my window. The horse tossed its head and chawed its frothy bit; and the coachman sat up beside his whip in the sparkling frosty afternoon air. My heart gave a thump, and I was still seeking vaguely to connect this event with myself or with Mr Bowater in Buenos Ayres, when the door opened and a lady entered whose plumed and purple bonnet was as much too small for her head as she herself was too large for the room. Yet in sheer dimensions this was not a very large lady. It was her "presence" that augmented her. She seemed, too, to be perfectly accustomed to these special proportions, and with a rather haughty, "Thank you," to Mrs Bowater, winningly announced that she was Lady Pollacke, "a friend, a mutual friend, as I understand, of dear Mr Crimble's." Though a mauvish pink in complexion, Lady Pollacke was so like her own white horse that whinnyingly rather than winningly would perhaps have been the apter word. I have read somewhere 164 Memoirs of a Midget that this human resemblance to horses sometimes accompanies unusual intelligence. The poet, William Wordsworth, was like a horse; 1 have seen his pint rail. And I should like to Mean Swift's. Whether or not, the unexpected arrival of this visitor betrayed me into some little gaucherie, and for a moment I still sat on, as she had discovered me, literally "floored" hy my novel. Then 1 scrambled with what dignity 1 could to my feet, and chased after my manners. "And not merely that," continued my visitor, seating herself on a horsehair easy-chair, "hut among my still older friends is Mr Pellew. So you see — you see," she repeated, apparently a little dazzled by the light of my window, "that we need no introduction, and that I know all — all the circumstances." She lowered a plump, white-kidded hand to her lap, as if, providentially, there all the circumstances law Unlike Mr Crimble, Lady Pollacke had not come to make ex- cuses, but to bring me an invitation — nothing less than to take tea with her on the following Thursday afternoon. But first she hoped — she was sure, in fact, and she satisfied herself with a candid gaze round my apartment — that I was comfortable with Mrs liowater; "a thoroughly trustworthy and sagacious woman, though, perhaps, a little eccentric in address." I assured her that I was so comfortable that some of my happiest hours were spent gossiping with my landlady over my supper. "Ah, yes," she said, "that class of person tells us such very in- teresting things occasionally, do they not? Yet I am convinced that the crying need in these days is for discrimination. Uplift, by all means, hut we mustn't confuse. What does the old proverb say: Festina lente: there's still truth in that. Now. had 1 known your father — but there; we must not rake in old ashes. We are clean, I see ; and quiet and secluded." Her equine glance made a rapid circuit of the photographs and ornaments that diversified the walls, and I simply couldn't help thinking what a queer little cage they adorned for so large and handsome a bird, the kind of bird, as one might say, that is less weight than magnitude. I was still casting my eye up and down her silk and laces when she abruptly turned upon me with a direct question : "You sel- dom, 1 suppose, go out?" Possibly if Lady Pollacke had not at this so composedly turned 165 Memoirs of a Midget her full face on me — with its exceedingly handsome nose — her bon- net might have remained only vaguely familiar. Now as I looked at her, it was as if the full moon had risen. She was, without the least doubt in the world, the lady who had bowed to Mr Crimble from her carriage that fateful afternoon. A little countenance is not, perhaps, so tell-tale as a large one. (I remember, at any rate, the horrid shock I once experienced when my father set me up on his hand one day to show me my own face, many times magnified, in his dressing-room shaving-glass.) But my eyes must have nar- rowed a little, for Lady Pollacke's at once seemed to set a little harder. And she was still awaiting an answer to her question. " 'Go out' !" I repeated meditatively, "not very much, Lady Pol- lacke ; at least not in crowded places. The boys, you know." "Ah, yes, the boys.' 1 ' It was Mr Crimble's little dilemma all over again : Lady Pollacke was evidently wondering whether I knew she knew I knew. "But still," I continued cheerfully, "it is the looker-on that sees most of the game, isn't it?" Her eyelids descended, though her face was still lifted up. "Well, so the proverb says," she agreed, with the utmost cordiality. It was at this moment — as I have said — that she invited me to tea. She would come for me herself, she promised. "Now wouldn't that be very nice for us both — quite a little adventure ?" I was not perfectly certain of the niceness, but might not Mr Crimble be a fellow-guest; and hadn't I an urgent and anxious mission with him ? I smiled and murmured ; and, as if her life had been a series of such little social triumphs, my visitor immediately rose; and, I must confess, in so doing seemed rather a waste of space. "Then that's settled : Thursday afternoon. We must wrap up," she called gaily through her descending veil. "This treacherous month ! It has come in like a lamb, but" — and she tugged at her gloves, still scrutinizing me fixedly beneath her eyelids, "but it will probably go out like a lion." As if to illustrate this prediction, she swept away to the door, leaving Mrs Bowater's little parlour and myself to gather our scattered wits together as best we could, while her carriage rolled away. Alas, though I love talking and watching and exploring, how could I be, even at that age, a really social creature? Though Lady Pollacke had been politeness itself, the remembrance of her 166 Memoirs of a Midget bonnet in less favourable surroundings was still in my mind'- eye. If anything, then, her invitation slightly depressed me. Besides, Thursday never was a favourite day of mine. It is said to have only one lucky In air— the lawn. But this is not tea- time. Worse still, the coming Thursday seemed to ha ked all the virtue out of the Wed ' in between. I prefer to see the future stretching out boundless and empty in front of me — like the savannas of Robinson Cru sland. Visitors, and I am quite sure he would have agreed with me, are hardly at times to be distinguished from visitation . All this merely means that 1 was a rather green and backward young woman, and, far worse, unashamed of being so. Here was one of the greatest ladies of Beechwood lavishing attentions upon me, and all I was thinking was how splendid an appearance she would have made a few days before if she had borrowed his whip from her coachman and dispersed m little mob with it, as had Mrs Stocks with her duster. But noblesse oblige; Mr Crimble had been compelled to consider my feelings, and no doubt Lady Pollacke had Seen compelled to consider his. The next day was fine, but I overslept myself and was robbed of my morning walk. For many hours I was alone. Mrs Bowater had departed on one of her shopping bouts. So, who- ever knocked, knocked in vain; and I listened to such efforts in secret and unmannerly amusement. I wonder if ever ghosts come knocking like that on the doors of the mind; and it isn't that one won't hear, but can't. My afternoon was spent in an anxious examination of my wardrobe. Four o'clock punctually arrived, and, almost as punctually, Lady Pollacke. Soon, under Mrs Bowater's contemplative gaze, I was mounted up on a pile of cushions, and we were howling along in most inspiriting fashion through the fresh March air. Strangely enough, when during our progress, eyes were now bent in my direction. Lady Pollacke seemed copiously to enjoy their interest. This was ■ illy the case when she was acquainted with their owners; and bowed her bow in return. "Quite a little reception for von," she bi I at me, after a particula v lv r< able carria d cast its occupants' scan modulated glances in my direction. How strange is human- char- acter! To an intelligent onlooker, my other little reception must have been infinitely more inspiring; and yet she had almost wan- 167 Memoirs of a Midget tonly refused to take any part in it. Now, supposing I had been Royalty or a corpse run over in the street. . . . But we were come to our journey's end. Brunswick House was a fine, square, stone-edged edifice, dom- inating its own "grounds." Regiments of crocuses stood with mouths wide open in its rich loam. Its gateposts were surmounted by white balls of stone ; and the gravel was of so lively a colour that it must have been new laid. Wherever I looked, my eyes were impressed by the best things in the best order. This was as true of Lady Pollacke's clothes, as of her features, of her gateposts, and her drawing-room. And the next most important thing in the last was its light. Light simply poured in upon its gilt and brass and pale maroon from two high wide windows staring each other down from be- tween their rich silk damask curtains. It was like entering an enormous bath, and it made me timid. In the midst of a large animal's skin, beneath a fine white marble chimney-piece, and under an ormolu clock, the parlour-maid was directed to place a cherry-coloured stool for me. Here I seated myself. With a fine, encouraging smile my hostess left me for a few minutes to myself. Maybe because an embroidered fire-screen that stood near reminded me of Miss Fenne, I pulled myself together. "Don't be a ninny,'' I heard myself murmur. My one hope and desire in this luxurious solitude was for the opportunity to deliver my message to Mr Crimble. This was not only a visit, it was an adventure. I looked about the flashing room ; and it rather stared back at me. The first visitor to appear was none but Miss Bullace, whose recitation of "The Lady's 'Yes' ' had so peculiarly inspirited Fanny. She sat square and dark with her broad lap in front of her, and scrutinized me as if 110 emergency ever daunted her. And Lady Pollacke recounted the complexity of ties that had brought us together. Miss Bullace, alas, knew neither Mr Am- brose Pellew, nor my godmother, nor even my godmother's sister, Augusta Fenne. Indeed I seemed to have no claim at all on her recognition until she inquired who; her it was not Augusta Fcnne's cousin, Dr Julius Fenne, who had died suddenly while on a visit to the Bermudas. Apparently it was. Wo all at once fell into better spirits, which were still more refreshed when Lady Pol- lacke remarked that Augusta had also "gone off like that," and that Fennes were a doomed family. 1 68 Memoirs of a Midget Bui merely to smile and smile is not to partake; so I ventured to suggest that to judge from my la-t letter from my godmother she, at any rate, was in her usual health; and I added, rather more cheerfully perhaps than the fad warranted, that my family seemed to he doomed too. since, so far a I was aware, 1 myself was the la>t of it left alive. At this a sudden gush of shame welled up in me at the thought that through all my troubles I had never once rememhered the kindnesses of my step-grandfather; that he, too, might be dead. 1 was so rapt away by the thought that I caught only the last three words of Miss I'.ullace's murmured aside to Lady Pollacke, viz., "not blush unseen." Lady Pollacke rai ed her eyebrows .and nodded vigorously; and then to my joy Mr Crimble and a venerable old lady with silver curl> clustering out of her bonnet were shown into the room. He looked pale and absent as he bent himself down to take my hand. It was almost as if in secret collusion we had breathed the wind Fanny together. Airs Crimble was supplied with a tea-cup, and her front teeth were soon unusually busy with a slice of thin bread and butter. Eating or drinking, her intense old eyes dwelt dis- tantly but assiduously on my small shape; and she at last entered into a long story of how, as a girl, she had been taken to a circus — a circus: and there had seen. . . . But what she had seen Mr Crimble refused to let her divulge. lie jerked forward so hastily that his fragment of toasted scone rolled off his plate into the wild beast's skin, and while, with some little difficulty, he was retrieving it, he assured us that his mother's memory was little short of miraculous, and particularly in relation to the past. "1 have noticed," he remarked, in what I thought a rather hollow voice, "that the more advanced in years we — er — happily become, the more closely we return to childhood." "Senile. . ." I began timidly, remembering Dr Phelps's phrase. But Mr Crimble hastened on. "Why, mother." he appealed to her, with an indulgent laugh, 'I suppose to you 1 am still nothing but a small boy about that height ?" lie stretched out a ringless left hand about twenty-four inches above the rose-patterned carpet. The old lady was not to be so easily smoothed over. "You in- terrupted me, Harold," she retorted, with some little show of in- dignation, "in what I was telling Lady Pollacke. Even a child of that size would have been a perfect monstrosity." II H, Memoirs of a Midget A lightning grimace swept over Miss Bullace's square features. "Ah, ah, ah!" laughed Mr Crimble, "I am rebuked, I am in the corner ! Another scone, Lady Pollacke ?" Mrs Crimble was a beautiful old lady; but it was with a rather unfriendly and feline eye that she continued to regard me; and I wondered earnestly if Fanny had ever noticed this characteristic. "The fact of the matter is," said Lady Pollacke, with con- viction, "our memories rust for want of exercise. Where, physi- cally speaking, would you be, Mr Crimble, if you hadn't the parish to tramp over ? Precisely the same with the mind. Every day I make a personal effort to commit some salient fact to memory — such a fact, for a trivial example, as the date of the Norman Conquest. The consequence is, my husband tells me, I am a veritable encyclopaedia. My father took after me. Alexander the Great, I have read somewhere, could address by name — though one may assume not Christian name — every soldier in his army. Thomas Babington Macaulay, a great genius, poor man, knew by heart every book he had ever read. A veritable mine of memory. On the other hand, I once had a parlour-maid, Sarah Jakes, who couldn't remember even the simplest of her duties, and if it hadn't been for my constant supervision would have given us port with the soup." "Perfectly, perfectly true," assented Miss Bullace. "Now mine is a verbal memory. My mind is a positive magnet for words. Method, of course, is everything. I weld. Let us say that a line of a poem terminates with the word bower, and the next line commences with she, I commit these to memory as one word — Bozvershee — and so master the sequence. My old friend, Lady Bovill Porter — we were schoolfellows — recommended this method. It was Edmund Kean's, I fancy, or some other well- known actor's. How else indeed, could a great actor realise what he was doing? Word-perfect, you see, he is free." "Exactly, exactly," sagely nodded Mr Crimble, but with a countenance so colourless and sad that it called back to my remembrance the picture of a martyr — of St Sebastian, I think — that used to hang up in my mother's room. "And you?" — I discovered Lady Pollacke was rather shrilly inquiring of me. "Is yours a verbal memory like Miss Bullace's; or are you in my camp?" "Ah, there," cried Mr Crimble, tilting back his chair in sudden 170 Memoirs of a Midget enthusiasm. "Miss M. positively puts me to shame. And poetry, Miss Bullace; even your wonderful repertory!" "You mean Miss M. recitesl ' inquired Miss Bullace, leaning forward over her lap. "But how entrancing! It is we, then, who are birds of a feather. And how I should adore to hear a fellow-enthusiast. Now, won't you. Lady Pollacke, join your entreaties to mine? Just a stanza or two!" Ai chill crept through my hones. I had accepted Lady Pollacke's invitation, thinking my mere presence would be enter- tainment enough, and because I knew it was important to see life, and immensely important to see Mr Crimble. In actual fact it seemed I had hopped for a moment not out of my cage, but merely, as Fanny had said, into another compartment of it. "But Mr Crimble and I were only talking," I managed to utter. "Oh, now, but do ! Delicious !" pleaded a trio of voices. Their faces had suddenly become a little strained and un- natural. The threat of further persuasion lifted me almost automatically to my feet. With hunted eyes fixed at last on a small marble bust with stooping head and winged brow that stood on a narrow table under the window, I recited the first thing that sprang to remembrance — an old poem my mother had taught me, Torn o' Bedlam. "The moon's my constant mistress, And the lovely owl my marrow ; The flaming- drake, And the night-crow, make Me music to my sorrow. I know more than Apollo ; For oft when he lies sleeping, I behold the stars At mortal wars. And the rounded welkin weeping. The moon embraces her shepherd, And the Queen of Love her warrior; While the first does horn The stars of the morn. And the next the heavenly farrier. . . ." 171 Memoirs of a Midget Throughout these first three stanzas all went well. So rapt was my audience that I seemed to be breaking the silence of the seas beyond their furthest Hebrides. But at the first line of the fourth — at "With a heart" — my glance unfortunately wandered off from the unheeding face of the image and swam through the air, to be caught, as it were, like fly by spider, by Miss Bullace's dark, fixed gaze, that lay on me from under her flat hat. 'With a heart,' " I began ; and failed. Some ghost within had risen in rebellion, sealed my tongue. It seemed to my irrational heart that I had — how shall I say it? — betrayed my "stars," betrayed Fanny, that she and they and I could never be of the same far, quiet company again. So the "furious fancies" were never shared. The blood ran out of my cheek; I stuck fast ; and shook my head. At which quite a little tempest of applause spent itself against the walls of Lady Pollacke's drawing-room, an applause reinforced by that of a little round old gentleman, who, unnoticed, had entered the room by a farther door, and was now advancing to greet his guest. He was promptly presented to me on the beast-skin, and with the gentlest courtesy begged me to con- tinue. 'With a heart,' now ; 'with a heart . . .' " he prompted me, "a most important organ, though less in use nowadays than when / was a boy." But it was in vain. Even if he had asked me only to whisper the rest of the poem into his long, pink ear, for his sake alone, I could not have done so. Moreover, Mr Crimble was still nod- ding his head at his mother in confirmation of his applause; and Miss Bullace was assuring me that mine was a poem entirely unknown to her, that, "with a few little excisions/' it should be instantly enshrined in her repertory — "though perhaps a little bizarre!" and that if I made trial of Lady Bovill Porter's Bowershce method, my memory would never again play me false. "The enunciation— am T not right, Sir Walter?— as distinct from the elocution— was flawless. And really, quite remarkable vocal power!" Amidst these smiles and delights, and what with the brassy heat of the fire and the scent of the skin, I thought I should 172 Memoirs of a Midget presently faint, and caught, as it" at a straw, at the bust in the window. "How lovely!" I cried, with pointing finger. . . . At that, silence fell, but only for a moment. Lady Pollacke managed to follow the unexpected allusion, and led me off for a closer inspection. In the hushed course of our progress thither I caught out of the distance two quavering words uttered as if in expostulation, "apparent intelligence." It was Mrs Crimble addressing Sir Walter Pollacke. ''Classical, you know," Lady Pollacke was sonorously inform- ing me, as we stood together before the marble head. "Charm- ing pose, don't you think? Though, as we see, only a frag- ment — one of Sir Walter's little hobbies." 1 looked up at the serene, winged, sightless face, and a whisper sounded on and on in my mind in its mute presence. "1 know more than Apollo; I know more than Apollo." I low hi ■■ that this mere deaf-and-dumbness should seem more real, more human even, than anything or any one else in Lady Pollacl elegant drawing-room. Put self-possession was creeping back. "Who," 1 asked, "i.vhe? And who sculped him?" "Scalped him?" cried Lady Pollacke, poring down on me in dismay. "Cut him out?" "Ah, my dear young lady," said a quiet voice, "that I cannot tell you. It is the head of Hypnos, Sleep, you know, the son of Night and brother of Death. ( hie wing, .as you see, has been broken away in preparation for this more active age, and yet . . . only a replica, of course"; the voice trembled into richness, "but an exceedingly pleasant example. It gives me rare pleasure, rare pleasure," he stood softly rocking, hands under coat-tails, eyes drinking me in, "to — to have your companionship." What pleasure his words gave me, I could not — can never — express. Then and there I was his slave for ever. "Walter," murmured Lady Pollacke, as if fondly, smiling down on the rotund old gentleman, "you are a positive peacock over your little toys; is he not, Mr Crimble? Did you ever hear of a woman wasting her affections on the inanimate? Even a doll, I am told, is an infant in disguise." But Mr Crimble had approached us not to discuss infants 173 Memoirs of a Midget or woman, but to tell Lady Pollacke that her carriage was awaiting me. "Then pity 'tis, 'tis true," cried she, as if in Miss Bullace's words. "But please, Miss M., it must be the briefest of adieus. There are so many of my friends who would enjoy your company — and those delightful recitations. Walter, will you see that everything's quite — er — convenient ?" I am sure Lady Pollacke's was a flawless savoir faire, yet, when I held out my hand in farewell, her cheek crimsoned, it seemed, from some other cause than stooping. The crucial moment had arrived. If one private word was to be mine with Mr Crimble, it must be now or never. To my relief both gentlemen accompanied me out of the room, addressing their steps to mine. Urgency gave me initiative. I came to a stand- still on the tesselated marble of the hall, and this time proffered my hand to Sir Walter. He stooped himself double over it; and I tried in vain to dismiss from remembrance a favourite reference of Pollie's to the guinea-pig held up by its tail. I wonder now what Sir W. would have said of me in his autobiography: "And there stood a flaxen spelican in the midst of the hearthrug ; blushing, poor tiny thing, over her little piece like some little bread-and-butter miss fresh from school." Something to that effect? I wonder still more who taught him so lovable a skill in handling that spelican ? "There; good-bye," said he, "and the blessing, my dear young lady, of a fellow fanatic." He turned about and ascended the staircase. Except for the parlour-maid who was awaiting me in the porch, Mr Crimble and I were alone. 174 Chapter Twenty M "TV 1% R CRIMBLE," I whispered, "I have a message." A tense excitement seized him. His face turned a dusky yellow. How curious it is to see others as they must sometimes see ourselves. Should / have gasped like that, if Mr Crimble had been Fanny's Mercury? "A letter from Miss Bowater," I whispered, "and I am to say," the cadaverous face was close above me, its sombre melting eyes almost bulging behind their glasses, "I am to say that she is giving yours 'her earnest attention, let alone her prayers.'' 1 remember once, when Adam Waggett as a noisy little boy was playing in the garden at home, the string of his toy bow suddenly snapped: Mr Crimble drew back as straight and as swiftly as that. His eyes rained unanswerable questions. But the parlourmaid had turned to meet me, and the next moment she and I were side by side in Lady Pollacke's springy carriage en route for my lodgings. I had given my message, but never for an instant had I anticipated it would have so overwhelming an effect. There must have been something inebriating in Lady Pollacke's tea. My mind was still simmering with excitement. And yet, during the whole of that journey, I spent not a moment on Mr (Trimble's or Fanny's affairs, or even on Brunswick House, but on the dreadful problem whether or not I ought to "tip" the par- lourmaid, and if so. with how much. Where had 1 picked this enigma up? Possibly from some chance reference of my father's. It made me absent and harassed. I saw not a face or a Mower; and even when the parlourmaid was actually waiting at my re- quesl in Mrs Bowater's passage, 1 stood over my money-chest, still incapable of coming to a decision. Instinct prevailed. Just as I could not bring myself to com- plete Tom o' Bedlam with Miss Bullace looking out of her eyes at me, so I could not bring myself to offer money to Lady Pollacke's nice prim parlourmaid. Instead I hastily scrabbled 175 Memoirs of a Midget up in tissue paper a large fiat brooch — a bloodstone set in pinch- beck — a thing of no intrinsic value, alas, but precious to me because it had been the gift of an old servant of my mother's. I hastened out and lifting it over my head, pushed it into her hand. Dear me, how ashamed of this impulsive action I felt when I had regained my solitude. Should I not now be the jest of the Pollacke kitchen and drawing-room alike? — for even in my anxiety to attain Mr Crimble's private ear, I had half -consciously noticed what a cascade of talk had gushed forth when Mr Crimble had closed the door of the latter behind him. That evening I shared with Mrs Bowater my experiences at Brunswick House. So absorbed was I in my own affairs that I deliberately evaded any reference to hers. Yet her pallid face, seemingly an inch longer and many shades more austere these last two days, touched my heart. "You won't think," I pleaded at last, "that I don't infinitely prefer being here, with you? Isn't it, Mrs Bowater, that you and I haven't quite so many things to pretend about? It is easy thinking of others when there are only one or two of them. But whole drawing-roomsful ! While here; well, there is only just you and me." "Why, miss," she replied, "as for pretending, the world's full of shadows, though substantial enough when it comes to close quarters. If we were all to look at things just bare in a manner of speaking, it would have to be the Garden of Eden over again. It can't be done. And it's just that that what's called the gentry know so well. We must make the* best use of the mess we can." I was tired. The thin, sweet air of spring, wafted in at my window after the precocious heat of the day, breathed a faint, reviving fragrance. A curious excitement was in me. Yet her words, or perhaps the tone of her voice, coloured my fancy with vague forebodings. I pushed aside my supper, slipped off my fine visiting clothes, and put on my dressing-gown. With lights extinguisbed, I drew the blind, and strove for a while to puzzle out life's riddle for myself. Not for the first or the last time did wan- dering wits cheat me of the goal, for presently in the quiet out of my thoughts, stole into my imagination the vision of that dreaming head my eyes had sheltered on. 176 Memoirs of a Midget "Hypnos," I sighed the word; and— another face. Fanny' seemed to melt into and mingle with the visionary features. Why, wliv, was my desperate thought, why needed she allow the world to come to such close quarters? Why, with so many plausible rea- sons given in her letter for keeping poor Mr Crimble waiting, had she withheld the one that counted Eor most? And what was it. J I knew in my heart that that could not be "making the best use of the mess." Surely, if one just told only the truth, there wasn't any- thing else to tell. It had taken me some time to learn this lesson. A low, rumbling voice shook up from the kitchen. M Bowater was talking to herself. Dejection drew over me again at the thought of the deceit 1 was in, and I looked at m; for Fanny as 1 suppose Abraham at the altar oi stones lool ed at his son Isaac. Then suddenly a thought far more matter-of-fact chilled through my mind. I saw again Mr Crimble huddling down towards me in that echoing hall, heard my voice delivering Fanny's message, and realized that half of what 1 had said had heen written in mockery. It had been intended for my eye only — "7.(7 alone my prayers." In the solitude of the darkness the words had a sound far more sinister than even Fanny can have intended. Mr Crimble, however, had accepted them apparently in good faith — to judge at least from the letter which reached me the fol- lowing morning: — "Deaf Miss M.,— Thank you. 1 write with a mind so overbur- dened that words fail me. But I realize that Miss Bowater lias no truer friend than yourself, and shall be frank. After that terrible morning you might well have refused to help me. I cannot believe that you will — for her sake. This long concealment, believe me, is not of my own seeking. It cannot, it must not. continue, a moment beyond tin- nec< ity. For weeks, nay, mouths. I have been tortured with doubts and misgivings. Her pride, her impenetrable heedless- ness; oh, indeed, I realize the difficulties of her situation. 1 dare not Speak till she gives consent. Yet silence puts me in a false position, and tongues, as perhaps even you may lie aware, begin to war. Nor ] his my first attempt, and — to lie more frank than 1 feel is discreet — there is my mother (quite a rom hers) now. alas, aged and more dependent on my affection and care than ever. To make a change now — the talk, the absence of Christian charity, my own temperament and calling! I pray for counsel to guide my stumbling bark on this sea of darkest tempest. K7 Memoirs of a Midget "Can F. decide that her affections are such as could justify her in committing her future to me? Am I justified in asking her? You, too, must have many anxieties — anxieties perhaps unguessed at by those of coarser fibre. And though I cannot venture to ask your confidences, I do ask for your feminine intuition — even though this may seem an intrusion after my sad discomfiture the other day. And yet, I assure you, it was not corporeal fear — are not we priests the police of the City Beautiful? Might I not have succeeded merely in making us both ridiculous? But that is past, and the dead past must bury its dead: there is no gentler sexton. "Need I say that this letter is not the fruit of any mere impulse. The thought, the very image of her never leaves my consciousness night or day; and I get no rest. I am almost afraid at the power she has of imprinting herself on the mind. I implore you to be discreet, without needless deception. I will wait patiently. My last desire is to hasten an answer — unless, dear Miss M., one in the affirmative. And would it be possible — indeed the chief purpose of this letter was to make this small request — would it be possible to give me one hour — no tea — this afternoon? There was a phrase in your whispered message — probably because of the peculiar acoustic properties of Brunswick House — that was but half-caught. We must not risk the faintest shadow of misunderstanding. "Believe me, yours most gratefully, though 'perplexed in the ex- treme,' "Harold Crimble. "PS. 1 — I feel at times that it is incumbent on one to burn one's boats; even though out of sight the further shore. "And the letter : would it be even possible to share a glance at that?" My old habit of hunting in the crannies of what I read had ample opportunity here. Two things stood out in my mind : a kind of astonishment at Mr Crimble's "stumbling bark" which he was ask- ing me to help to steer, and inexpressible relief that Fanny's letter was buried beyond hope of recovery before he could call that after- noon. The more I pitied and understood his state of mind, the more helpless and anxious I felt. Then, in my foolish fashion, I began again picturing in fancy the ceremony that would bring Mr Crimble and my landlady into so close a relationship. Why did he fear the wagging of tongues so much? I didn't. Would M : Bullace be a bridesmaid? Would 1? ! searched in my drawer and read over the "Form of Solemnization of Matrimony." T came to "the dreadful day of judgment," and to "serve" and 178 Memoirs of a Midget "obey," and shivered. I was not sure that I cared for the way human beings had managed these things. But at least, brides- maids said nothing, and if I While I was thus engaged Mrs Bowater entered the room. I smuggled my prayer-book aside and gave her Fanny's letter. She- was always a woman of few words. She folded it reflectively ; took off her spectacles, replaced them in their leather case, and that in her pocket. " 'Soap, handkerchiefs, stockings,' " she mused, "though why in the world she didn't say 'silk' is merely Fanny's way. And I am sure, miss," she added, "she must have had one peculiar mo- ment when the thought occurred to her of the bolt." "But, Mrs Bowater," I cried in snake-like accents, " you said you were 'soliciting no divulgements.' " Mrs Bowater's mouth opened in silent laughter. "Between you " she began, and broke off. "Gracious goodness, but here's that young man, Mr Crimble, calling again." Mr Crimble drank tea with me, though he ate nothing. And now, his darkest tempest being long since stilled, I completely absolve myself for amending the message which Lady Pollacke's tesselated hall had mercifully left obscure. He sat there, almost like a goldfish — though black in effect beyond description — gap- ing for the crumb that never comes. "She bade me," I muttered my falsehood, "she bade me say secretly that she has had your letter, that she is giving it her earnest attention, her earnest at- tention, alone, and in her prayers." The dark liquid pupils appeared for one sheer instant to rotate, then he turned away, and, as if quite helplessly, stifled an un- sheltered yawn. " 'Alone,' " he cried desperately. "I see myself, I see myself in her young imagination !" I think he guessed that my words were false, that his ear had not been as treacherous as all that. Whether or not, no human utterance have I ever heard so humble, tragic, final. It knelled in my ear like the surrender of all hope. And yet it brought me, personally, some enlightenment. It was with Mr (Trimble's eyes that I now scanned not only his phantom presence in Fanny' imagination, but my own, standing beside him — a "knick-knack" figure of fun, pygmied beneath the flappets of his clerical coat, like 179 Memoirs of a Midget a sun-beetle by a rook. The spectacle strengthened me without much affecting Fanny. She was no longer the absolute sultana of my being. I could think now, as well as adore. How strange it is that when our minds are needled to a sharp focus mere "things" swarm so close. There was not a single or- nament or book or fading photograph in Mrs Bowater's parlour that in this queer privacy did not mutely seem to cry, "Yes, here am I. This is how things go."' I leant forward and looked at him. "We mustn't care what she sees, what she thinks, if only we can go on loving her." ' 'Can, can' ?" echoed Mr Crimble, "I have prayed on my knees not to." This was a sharp ray on my thoughts of love. "But why?" I said. "Even when I was a child, I knew by my mother's face that I must go on, and should go on, loving her, Mr Crimble, whether she loved me or not. One can't make a bad mistake in giving, can one? And yet — well, you must remember that I can- not but have been a — a disappointment; that as long as I live 1 can't expect any great affection, any disproportionate one, I mean." "But, but," he stumbled on, "a daughter's affection — it's dif- ferent. I musn't brood on my trouble. It unhinges me. Why, the clock stops. But nevertheless may God bless you for that." "But surely," I persisted, smiling as cheerfully as I could, "Nil desperandum, Mr Crimble. And you know what they say about fish in the sea." His eye rolled round on me as if a serpent had spoken. "I am sorry, I am sorry," he repeated rapidly, in the same low, unem- phatic undertone as if to himself. "I must just wait. You have never seen a sheep — a bullock, shall we call him ? — being driven to the slaughter-house. On, on — from despair to despair. That's my position." His face was emptied of expression, his eyes fixed. These words, his air, his look, this awful private thing — I can't say — it shocked and frightened me beyond words. But I answered him steadily none the less. "Listen, Mr Crimble," I said, "look at me, here, what I am. I have had my desperate moments too — more alone in the world than you can ever be! And I swear before God that I will never, never be not myself." I wonder what the listener thought of this little challenge, not perhaps what Mr Crimble did. "Well," he replied, with sudden calm, "that's the courage 1 80 Memoirs of a Midget of the martyr^, and not all of them perhaps have been Christians, if history is to he credited. Yes, and in sober truth, I assure yon, you, that I would go to the stake for — for Miss Bowater." He rose, and in that instant of dignity 1 foresaw what was never to be — lawn sleeves encasing those Loose, black arm-. He had somehow wafted me hack to my Confirmation. "And the letter? I have no wish to intrude. But her actual words. I mayn't see tkatf "You will please forgive me," I entreated helplessly, "it is buried ; because, you see. Fanny — you see, Mrs Bowater " "Ah," he said. "It is this deception which dismays, scandalizes me most. But you will keep me informed?" He seized his soft round hat, and it was on this cold word we parted. I stood by the window, with hand stretched out to summon him hack. But no word of comfort or hope came to my aid, and I watched him out of sight. 181 Chapter Twenty-One T HAT night I wrote to Fanny, copying out my letter from the scrawling draft from which I am copying it now : — "Dear Fanny, — I have given Mr Crimble your message; first, exactly in your own words, though he did not quite hear them, and then, leaving out a little. You may be angry at what I am going to say — but I am quite sure you ought to answer him at once. Fanny, he's dreadfully fond of you. I never even dreamed people were like that — in such torture for what can't be, unless you mean you do care, but are too proud to tell him so. If he knows you have no heart for him, he may soon be better. This sounds hateful. But I am not such a pin in a pincushion as not to know that even the greatest sorrows and disappointments wear out. Why, isn't that beech-tree we sat under a kind of cannibal of its own dead leaves? "Your private letter is quite safe; though I prefer not to burn it — indeed, cannot burn it. You know how I have longed for it. But please, if possible, don't send me two in future. It doesn't seem fair; and your mother knew already about our star-gazing. You see, how else could the door have been bolted ! ! But it's best to have been found out — next, I mean, to telling oneself. "What day are you coming home? I look at it, as if it were a lighthouse — even though it is out of sight. Shall we go on with Wuthering Heights when you do come? I saw the 'dazzling' moon — but there, Fanny, what I want most to beg of you is to write to Mr. Crimble — all that you feel, even if not all that you think. No, perhaps I mean the reverse. He must have been wondering about you long before I began to. And there it was, all sunken in; no one could have guessed his longing by looking at him. I am afraid it must affect his health. "And now good-bye. I have made a vow to myself not to think into tilings too much. Your affectionate friend (as much of her as there is) — "MlDGETINA. "PS. — Please tell me the day you are coming; and that shall be my birthday." 182 Memoirs of a Midget Fanny was prompt in reply : — "Dear Midoetina, — It's a strange fact, but while, to judge from your letter, you seem to be growing smaller, I (in spite of Miss Stebbings's water porridge) am growing fatter. Now, which is the tragedy? I may come home on the 30th. If so, kill the fa' calf; I will supply the birthday-cake. How foolish of you to keep letters. 1 never do, lest I should remember the answers. Any- how, I shall not write again. But if, by any chance, Mr Crimble should make another call, will you explain that my chief motive in not singing at the concert was because I should have been a second mezzo-soprano. One of two in one concert must be superflui Perhaps I did not explain this clearly; nor did I say how charming I thought my double was. "I am tired — of overwork. I have finished Withering Heights. It is a mad. untrue book. The world is not like Emily Bronte's con- ception of it. It is neither dream nor nightmare, Midgetina, but wide, wide awake. And I am convinced that the poets are only cherubs with sugar-sticks to their little rosebud mouths. I abom- inate whitewash. As for 'putting people out of their misery,' and cannibal beech-trees: no, fretful midge! If you could sec me sitting here looking down on rows and rows of vacant and hostile faces — though one or two are infatuated enough — you would realize that such a practice would lead me into miscellaneous infanticide. "Personally, I never did think into things too painfully ; though as regards 'telling,' the reverse is certainly the wiser course. So you will forgive so short, and perhaps none too sweet, a letter from your affec. — F." Enclosed with this was a narrow slip of paper : — "I shall not write to you know who. Think, if you like, hut don't feel like a microscope. He is only in love. And however punctilious your own practice may he, pray. Miss M., do not preach — at any rate to your affecte. hut unregeneratc friend. — F." I believe I drafted and destroyed three answers to this letter. It broke down my defences far more easily than had the errand boys. It shamed me for a prig, a false friend, a sentimentalist. And the "fretful midge" rankled like salt in a wounded heart. Yet Fanny was faithless even to her po script. A sheaf of narcissuses hooded in blue tissue paper was left at the house a day or two afterwards. It was accom- 183 Memoirs of a Midget panied by Mr Crimble's card in a little envelope tied in with the stalks : — "I am given a ray of hope." Mrs Bowater had laid this offering on my table with a peculiar grimace, whether scornful or humorous, it was impossible to detect. "From Mr Crimble, miss. Why, one might think he had two irons in the fire !" I sat gazing at this thank-offering long after she had gone — the waxy wings, the crimson-rimmed corona, the pale-green cluster of pistil and stamen. .The heavy perfume stole over my senses, bringing only weariness and self -distaste to my mind. Fly that I was, caught in a web — once more I began a letter to Fanny, imploring her to write to her mother, to tell her everything. But that letter, too, was torn up into tiny pieces and burnt in the fire. Next morning, heavily laden with my parasol, a biscuit or two in my bag, my Sense and Sensibility and a rug in my arms, I set off very early for Wanderslore, having arranged with Mrs Bowater over night that she should meet me under my beech at a quarter to one. Under the flat, bud-pointed branches, I pressed on between clusters of primrose, celandine, and wild wood anemone, breathing in the earthy freshness of grass and moss. And presently I came out between the stones and jutting roots in sight of the vacant windows. I stood for a moment confronting their black regard, then descended the knoll and was soon making my- self comfortable beside the garden house. But first I managed to clamber up on a fragment of the fallen masonry and peep in at its low windows. A few dead, last-year's flies lay dry on their backs; dusty, derelict spider-webs; a litter of straw, and a few potsherds — the place was empty. But it was mine, and the very remembrance of which it whispered to me — the picture of my poor father's bedroom that night of the storm — only increased my sense of possession. What was wrong with me just then, what I had sallied out in hope to be delivered from, was the unhappy conviction that my life was worthless, and I of no use in the world. T had taught myself to make knots in strings, but actual experience seemed to have proved that most human tumblings resulted only 184 Memoirs of a Midget in "grannies" and not in the true lover's variety. They secure 1 nothing, only tangled and jammed. 1 was young then, and yet] as heavily burdened with other peopled responsibilil as was poor Christian with the bundle of his sins. But my bundle, too, in that lovely, desolate loneliness at last fell off my shoulders. Could I not still he loyal in heart and mind to Fanny, even though now 1 knew how little she cared whether 1 was loyal or not? I even climbed up behind Mr Crimble's thick spectacles and looked down again at myself from that point of vantage. Whether or not I was his affair, 1 could try to make him mine — perhaps even persuade Fanny to love him. Oh, dear; was not every singing bird in that wilderness, every unfolding flower and sunlit March leaf welcoming the spirit within me to their quiet habitation? As if in response to this naive thought, welled up in my memory the two last stanzas of my Tom o' Bedlam, which, either for pride or shame, had stuck in my throat on the skin mat in Lady Pollacke's sky-lit drawing-room : — "With a heart of furious fancies, Whereof 1 am commander: With a burning spear, And a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander. With a knight of ghosts and shadows, 1 summoned am to tourney : Ten leagues beyond The wide world's end ; Methinks it is no journey." Parasol for spear, the youngest Miss Shanks's pony for horse of air, there was I (even though common-sized boots might reckon it a mere mile or so), ten leagues at least beyond — Mrs 1 '.(.water's. Nor, like her husband, had 1 broken my leg; nor had Fanny broken my heart. All would come right again. Why, what a waste of Fanny it wotdd be to make her Mrs Crimble. My bishop, according to Miss Fenne, had had c|iiite a homely helpmate, "little short o\ a frump, Caroline, as I remember her thirty years ago." Perhaps if I left off my fine 185 Memoirs of a Midget colours and bought a nice brown stuff dress and a bonnet, might not Mr Crimble change his mind . . . ? I have noticed that as soon as I begin to laugh at myself, the whole world seems to smile in return. Absurd, contrary, volatile creature that I was — a kind of thankfulness spread over my mind. I turned on to my knees where I sat and repeated the prayers which in my haste to be off I had neglected before coming out. And thus kneeling, I opened my eyes on the garden again, bathed delicately in the eastern sunshine. There was my old friend, Mr Clodd's Nature, pranking herself under the nimble fingers of spring; and in her sight as well as in the sight of my godmother's God, and Mr Crimble's Almighty, and, possibly, of Dr Phelps's Norm, were not, in deed and in truth, all men equal? How mysterious and how entrancing! If "sight," then eyes: but whose? where? I gazed round me dazzledly, and if wings had been mine, would have darted through the thin, blue-green veil and been out into the morning. Poor she-knight ! romantical Miss Midge ! she had no desire to hunt Big Game, or turn steeplejack; her fancies were not dangerously "furious"; but, as she knelt there, environed about by that untended garden, and not so ridiculously pygmy either, even in the ladder of the world's proportion — saw-edged blade of grass, gold-cupped moss, starry stonecrop, green musky moschatel, close-packed pebble, wax-winged fly — well, I know not how to complete the sentence except by remarking that I am exceedingly glad I began to write my Life. I realized too that it is less flattering to compare oneself with the very little things of the world than with the great. Given time, I might scale an Alp; I could only kill an ant. Besides, I am beginning to think that one of the pleasantest ways of living is in one's memory. How much less afflicting at times would my present have been if I had had the foresight to remind myself how beguiling it would appear as the past. Even my old sharpest sorrows have now hushed themselves to sleep, and those for whom I have sorrowed are as quiet. Having come to a pause in my reflections, I opened my Sense and Sensibility at Chapter XXXV. Yet attend to Miss Austen I could not. She is one of those compact and cautious writers that will not feed a wandering mind; and at last, after 1 86 Memoirs of a Midget three times re-reading the same paragraph, an uneasy conviction began to steal over me. There was no doubt now in my mind. I was being watched. Softly, stealthily, I raised my eyes from my book and with not the least motion of head or body, glanced around me. Whereupon, as if it had been playing sentinel out of the thicket near at hand, a blackbird suddenly jangled its challenge, and with warning cries fled away on its wings towards the house. 187 Chapter Twenty-Two THEN instantly I discovered the cause of the bird's alarm. At first I fancied that this strange figure was at some little distance. Then I realized that his stature had misled me, and that he could not be more than twenty or thirty yards away. Standing there, with fixed, white face and black hair, under a flowering blackthorn, he remained as motionless and as intent as I. He was not more than a few inches, apparently, superior in height to myself. "So," I seemed to whisper, as gaze met gaze, "there !" hardly certain the while if he was real or an illusion. Indeed, if, even then before my eyes, he had faded out into the tangle of thorn, twig, and thin-spun blossom above and around him, it would not have greatly astonished, though it would have deeply dis- appointed me. With a peculiar, trembling curiosity, I held him with my gaze. If he would not disclose himself, then must I. Slowly and deliberately my cold hand crept out and grasped my parasol. Without for a moment removing my eyes from this interloper's face, I pushed its ribbed silk tent taut into the air. Click ! went the tiny spring; and at that he stirred. "Who are you : watching me ?" I cried in a low, steady voice across the space that divided us. His head stooped a little. I fancied — and feared — that he was about to withdraw. But after a pause he drew himself up and came nearer, casting, as he approached, his crooked shadow away from the sun on the close- cropped turf beside him. To this day I sometimes strive in vain to see, quite clearly in my mind, that face, as it appeared at that first meeting. A different memory of it obtrudes itself ; yet how many, many times have I searched his features for news of himself, and looked passingly — and once with final intensity — into those living eyes. Hut I recollect that his clothes looked slightly out of keeping and grotesque amid the green things of early spring. It seemed he had wasted in them. So, too, the cheek had wasted over 1 88 Memoirs of a Midget its bone, and seemed parched; the thin lips, the car-, slightly pointed. And then broke out his low, hollow voice. Scarcely rising or falling, the mere sound of it seemed to be as full of mean- ing as the words. He looked at me, and at all I po 1. as if piece by piece — as if he had been a long time searching for them all. Yet he now seemed to avoid my eyes, though they were serenely awaiting his. Indeed from this moment almost to the last, 1 was never at a loss or distressed in his company. He never called me out of myself beyond an easy and happy return, though he was to creep into my imagination as easily as a single bee creeps into the thousand-celled darkness of its hive. Whenever I parted from him, his remembrance was like that of one of those strange figures which thrust themselves as if out of the sleep-world into the mind's wakefulnc^; vividly, darkly, impress themselves upon consciousness, and then are gone. So I sometimes wonder if I ever really knew him, if he was ever perfectly real to me; like Fanny, for instance. Yet he made no pretence to be mysterious, and we were soon talking together almost as naturally as if we were playmates of child- hood who had met again after a long separation. He confessed that, quite unknown to me, he had watched me come and go in the cold mornings of winter, when frost had soon driven me home again out of the bare, frozen woods. He had even been present, I think, when Fanny and I had shared — or divided — the stars between us. A faint distaste at any rate showed itself on his face when he admitted that he hid seen me not alone. I was unaccustomed to that kind of interest, and hardly knew whether to be pleased or angry. "Rut you know I come here to be alone," I said as courteously as possible. "Yes," he answered, with face turned away. "That's how I saw you.'' Without my being aware of it, too, he played a kind of chess with me, seizing each answer in turn for hook on which to hang another question. What had I to conceal? Of my short history, though not of myself, 1 told him freely; vet asl him few questions in return. Nor at that time did I even con- sider how strange a chance had brought two such human bein as he and I to this place of meeting. Yet, after all, whales are 189 Memoirs of a Midget but little creatures by comparison with the ocean in which they roam, and glow-worm will keep tryst with glow-worm in forests black as night. Through all he said was woven a thread of secrecy. So low and monotonous was his voice (not lifting itself much, but only increasing in resonance when any thought angered or darkened his mind) ; so few were his gestures that he might have been talking in his sleep. Not once that long morning did he laugh, not even when I mischievously proffered him my parasol (as he sat a few paces away) to screen him from the March sun! Solemnly he shared Mrs Bowater's biscuits with me, scattering the crumbs to a robin that hopped up between us, as if he had been invited to our breakfast. His head hung so low between his heavy shoulders that it reminded me of a flower stooping for want of water. Not that there was anything limp or fragile or gentle in his looks. He was, far rather, clumsy and ugly in appearance, yet with a grace in his look like that of an old, haggled thorn-tree when the wind moves its branches. And anyhow, he was come to be my friend — out of the unknown. And when I looked around at the serene wild loveliness of the garden, it seemed to be no less happy a place because it was no longer quite a solitude. "You read," he said, glancing reflectively, but none too compli- mentarily, at my book. "It isn't wise to think too much." I replied solemnly, shutting Miss Austen up. "Besides, as I haven't the opportunity of seeing many people in the flesh, you know, the next best thing is to meet them in books — specially in this kind of book. If only I were Jane Austen; my gracious, I would enjoy myself! Her people are just the same as people are now — inside. I doubt if leopards really want to change their spots. But of course" — I added,- since he did not seem inclined to express any opinion — "I read other kinds of books as well. That's the best of being a dunce — there's so much to learn! Just lately I have been learning to tie knots." I laughed, and discovered that I was blushing. He raised his eyes slowly to my face, then looked so long and earnestly at my hands, that I was forced to hide them away under my bag. Long before I had noticed that his own hands 190 Memoirs of a Midget were rather large and powerful for his size. Fanny's face I had loved to watch for its fairness and beauty — it would have been as lovely if she had nol been within. To watch Mrs Bowater's was like spelling out hits of a peculiar language. I often found out what she was feeling or thinking hy imitating her expression, and then translating it, after she was gone. This young man's kept me engrossed because pf the self that brooded in it — its dark melancholy, too; and because even then, perhaps, I may have remotely and vaguely realized that flesh and spirit could not he long of one company. He himself was, as it were, a foreigner to me, and I felt I must make the best and most of him before he went off again. Perhaps memory reads into this experience more than in those green salad days I actually found there. But of this at least I am certain — that the morning sped on unheeded in his company, and I was even unconscious of how cold I was until he suddenly glanced anxiously into my face and told me so. So now we wandered off together towards the great house — which hitherto 1 had left unapproached. We climbed the green-stained scaling steps from terrace to terrace, tufted with wallflower and snapdragon amongst the weeds, cushioned with bright moss, fretted with lichen. Standing there, side by side with him, looking up — our two figures alone, on the wide flower- less weed-grown terrace — hale, sour weeds some of them, shoulder- high — I scrutinized the dark, shut windows. What was the secret that had kept it so long vacant, I inquired. Mrs Bowater had never given me any coherent an- swer to this question. My words dropped into the silence, like a pebble into a vast, black pool of water. "There was a tale about,'' he replied indifferently, and yet, as I fancied, not so indifferently as he intended, "that many years ago a woman" — he pronounced the word almost as if it had reference to a different species from ourselves — "that a woman had hanged herself in one of its upper rooms." "Hanged herself!" It was the kind of fable Mrs Ballard used to share with Adam Waggett's mother over their tea and shrimps. Frowning in horror and curiosity, I scanned his face. Was this the water I could dip for in his well? Alas, how familiar I was to become with the bucket. 191 Memoirs of a Midget He made a movement with his hands; at which I saw the poor creature up there in the darkness, suspended lifeless, poor, poor human, with head awry. "Why?" I asked him, pondering childishly over this picture. "It was mere gossip," he replied, "and true or not, such as 'they' make up to explain their own silly superstitions. Just thinking long enough and hard enough would soon invite an evil spirit into any old empty house. Human beings are no better than sheep, though they don't always see the dogs and shepherds that drive them." "And does it," I faltered, glancing covertly up the walls, and conscious of a novel vein of interest in this strangely inexhaustible world, "does the evil spirit ever look out of the windows ?" He turned his face to me, smiling; and inquired if I had ever heard the phrase, "the eyelids of the dawn." "There's Night, too," he said. "But whose spirit? Whose?" I persisted. "When I am here alone in the garden, why, it is just peace. How could that be, if an evil spirit haunted here?" "Yes," he said, "but a selfish, solitary peace. Dead birds don't sing. Don't come when you can't get back; or the clouds are down." "You are trying to frighten me," I said, in a louder voice. "And I have been too much alone for that. Of course things must look after themselves. Don't we? And you said an evil spirit. What is the good of dreaming when you are wide awake ?" "Then," said he, almost coldly, "do you deny that Man is an evil spirit? He distorts and destroys." But with that the words of my mother came back to me out of a far-away morning: "He made us of His Power and Love." Yet I could not answer him, could only wait, as if expectant that by mere silence I should be able to share the thoughts he was thinking. And, all the while, my eyes were brooding in some dark chamber of my mind on Fanny, and not, as they well might have, on the dark bark of Mr Crimble tossing in jeopardy beneath its fleeting ray of hope. Truly this stranger was making life very interesting, even if he was only prodding over its dead moles. And truly I was an incorrigibly romantic young lady ; for when, with a glance 192 Memoirs of a Midget at my grandfather's watch, I discovered that it was long • a t noon, and told him 1 must be gone; without a single moment's hesitation, I promised to come again to unci him on the very first line morning that showed. So strong within me was the desire to do so, that a profound dismay chilled my mind when, on turning about at the end of the terrace — for he had shown no inclination to accompany me - I found that he was already out of sight. I formally waved my hand towards where he had vanished in ease he should be watching; sighed, and went on. It was colder under the high, sunless trees. I gathered my cloak closer around me, and at tint di-covered nut only that Miss Austen had been left behind, hut that Fanny's letter still lay in undisturbed concealmeui beneath its -'one. It was too late to return for them now, and a vague misgiving that had sprung up in me amid the tree-trunks was quieted by the assur- ance that for these — rather than for any other reason — T must return to Wanderslore as soon as I could. So, in remarkably gay spirits, I hastened light-heeled on my way in the direction of civilized society, of nefarious Man, and of my never-to-be- blessed-too-much Mrs Bowater. 193 Chapter Twenty-Three MY landlady was already awaiting me at the place appointed, and we walked off together towards the house. It had been a prudent arrangement, for we met and passed at least half a dozen strangers before we arrived there, and one and all by the unfeigned astonishment with which they turned to watch our two figures out of sight (for I stooped once or twice, as if to tie my shoelace, in order to see), clearly proved themselves to belong to that type of humanity to which my new acquaint- ance had referred frigidly as THEY. Vanity of vanities, when one old loitering gentleman did not so much as lift an eyelid at me — h e was so absorbed in own thoughts — I felt a pang of annoyance. As soon as I was safely installed in my own room again, I confided in Mrs Bowater a full account of my morning's adventure. Not so much because I wished to keep free of any further deceit, as because I simply couldn't contain myself, and must talk of my Stranger. She heard me to the end without question, but with an unusual rigidity of features. She com- pressed her lips even tighter before beginning her catechism. "What was the young man's name,'* she inquired; "and where did he live?" My hope had been that she herself would be able to supply these little particulars. With a blank face, I shook my head: "We just talked of things in general." "I see," she said, and glanced at me, as if over her spectacles. Her next question was even less manageable. "Was the young fellow a gentleman ?" Alas! she had fastened on a flaw in my education. This was a problem absolutely new to me. T thought of my father, of Mr Waggett, Dr Grose, Dr Phelps, the old farmer in the railway train, of Sir Walter Pollacke, my bishop, Heathcliff, Mr Bowater, Mr Clodd, even Henry— or rather all these male 194 Memoirs of a Midget phantoms went whisking across the back of my mind, calling up every other two-legged creature of the same gender within sight or hearing. Meanwhile, Mrs Bowater stood like Patience on her Brussels carpet, or rather like Thomas de Torquemada, watching these intellectual contortions. "Well, really, do you know, Mrs Bowater," I was forced to acknowledge at last, with a sigh and a smile, "I simply can't say. I didn't think of it. That seems rather on his side, doesn't it? But to be quite, quite candid, perhaps not a gentleman; not exactly, I mean." "Which is no more than I supposed," was her comment, "and if not — and any kind of not, miss — what was he, then? And if not, why, you can never go there again !" "Indeed, but I must," I said, as if to myself. "With your small knowledge of the world," she retorted un- movedly, "you must, if you please, be guided by those with more. Who isn't a gentleman couldn't be desirable company if chanced on like a stranger in a young lady's lonely rambles. And how tall did you say? And what's more," she continued, not pausing for an answer, and gathering momentum on her way, "if he is a gentleman, I'd better come along with you, miss, and see for myself." A rebellious and horrified glance followed her retreating figure out of the room. So this was the reward for being open and above-board. What a ridiculous figure I should cut, tippeting along behind my landlady. What would my stranger think of me? What would she think of him? Was he a "gentleman"? To decide whether or not the Spirit of Man is an evil spirit had been an easy problem by comparison. Gentle man — why, of course, self muttered in shame to self convicted of yet another mean little s|nobbery. He had been almost absurdly gentle — had treated me as if I were an angel rather than a young woman. But the nettlerash produced by Mrs Bowater's bigotry was not to be so easily allayed as all that. It had invited yet another kind of THEM in. An old. green, rotting board hung over the wicket gate that led up the stony path into Wanderslore — "Trespassers will be prosecuted." Why couldn't one put boards up in the Wanderslore of one's mind ? My landlady had never in- quired if Lady Pollacke was a gentlewoman. How mechanical 195 Memoirs of a Midget things were in their unexpectedness. That morning I had gone out to free myself from the Crimble tangle, merely to return with a few more knots in the skein. A dead calm descended on me. I was adrift in the Sargasso Sea — in the Doldrums, and had dropped my sextant overboard. Even a long stare at the master-mariner on the wall gave me no help. Yet I must confess that these foolish reflections made me happy. I would share them with Fanny — perhaps with the "gentleman" himself, some day. I leaned over the side of my small vessel, more deeply interested in the voyage than I had been since Pollie had carried me out of my girlhood into the Waggetts' wagonette. And as I sat there, simmering over these novelties, a voice, clear as a cockcrow, exclaimed in my mind, "If father hadn't died, I'd have had nothing of all this." My hands clenched damp in my lap at this monstrosity. But I kept my wits and managed to face it. "If father hadn't died," I answered myself, "you don't know what would have happened. And if you think that, because I am happy now, anything could make me not wish him back, it's a lie." But I remained a little less comfortable in mind. The evening post brought me a letter and a registered parcel. I turned them over and over, examining the unfamiliar hand- writing, the bright red seals ; but all in vain. In spite of my hard-won knotlore, I was still kneeling over the package and wrestling with string and wax, when Mrs Bowater, folding her letter away in its envelope, announced baldly: "She's not coming home, it seems, at all these holidays, having been in- vited by some school friend into the country — Merriden, or some such place. Not that you might expect Fanny to write plain, when she doesn't mean plain." "Oh, Mrs Bowater ! Not at all ?" Cold fogs of disappointment swept in, blotting out my fool's paradise. That inward light without which life is dark indeed died in eclipse. The one thought and desire which I now realized I had been feeding on from hour to hour, had been snatched away. To think that they had been nothing but waste. "Oh, Fanny," I whispered bitterly to myself, "oh, Fanny !'' But the face I lifted to her mother showed only defiance. 196 Memoirs of a Midget "Well," I muttered, "who cares? Let's hope she will enjoy herself better than mooning about in this dingy old place." .Mrs Bowater merely continued to look quietly over the en- velope at me. "Oh. but you know, Mrs Bowater," I quaked miserably, "it's not dingy to me. Surely a promise is a promise, whoever you make it to !" With that 1 stooped my face over the stuffy-smelling brown paper, and attacked the last knot with my teeth. With eyes still a little asquint with resentment 1 smoothed away the wrappings from the shape within. Then every thought evaporated in a sigh. For there, of a delicate veined fairness against the white paper, lay a minute copy in ivory of none hut lovely Hypnos. Half-blindly 1 .stared at it lost in a serenity heyond all hope of my poor, foolish life — then lifted it with hoth hands away from my face: "A present — to me! Look!" I cried, "look !" Mrs Howater settled her face over the image as if it had been some tropical and noxious insect I was offering for her inspection. But I thrust it into her hand and opened my letter: — "My Dear Young Lady, — I am no poet, and therefore cannot hope to share with you the music of 'the flaming drake,' but we did share my Hypnos. Only a replica, as I told you, but none the less one of the most beautiful things I possess. Will you, then, give me the pleasure of accepting the contents of the little package 1 am having posted with this — as a small token of the delight your enthusiasm gave Yours most sincerely, — "Walter Pollacke. "PS. — Lady Pollacke tells me that we may perhaps again look forward to your company to tea in a few days, please do not think, then, of acknowledging this little message by po But I did acknowledge it. not with that guardedness of the feelings which Miss Austen seemed to recommend, but from the very depths of my heart. Next morning came Lady Pollacke's invitation: — "Dear Miss M., — I hasten to renew my invitation of last Thurs- day. \\ ill you give us the pleasure of your company at tea on 197 Memoirs of a Midget Friday afternoon? Mrs Monnerie — the younger daughter, as you will remember, of Lord B. — has expressed an exceedingly warm wish to make your acquaintance, and Mr. Pellew, who is giving us a course of sermons at St. Peter's during Holy Week, will also be with us. May we, perhaps, share yet another of those delightful recitations? "Believe me, "Yours sincerely, "Lydia Preston Pollacke." I searched my memory for memorial of Lord B. ; alas, in vain. This lapse made the thought of meeting his younger daughter a little alarming. Yet I must confess to having been pleasantly flattered by these attentions. Even the black draught administered by Fanny, who had not even thought it worth her while to send me a word of excuse or explanation, lost much of its bitterness. I asked Mrs Bowater if she supposed I might make Sir Walter a little present in return for his. Would it be a proper thing to do, would it be ladylike ? "What's meant kindly," she assured me, after a moment's reflection, "even if taken amiss, which, to judge from his letter, it won't be, is nothing to be thought of but only felt." This advice decided me, and early on my Friday morning I trimmed and freshened up as well as I could one of my grand- father's dwarf cedar-trees which, in the old days, had stood on my window balcony. Its branches were now a little dishevelled, but it was still a fresh and pretty thing in its grey-green pot. 198 Chapter Twenty-Four WITH tin's dwarf tree in my arms, when came the auspicii afternoon, I followed Lady Pollacke's parlourmaid — her neat little bonnet tied with a how under her ear — down my Bateses, and was lifted by Mrs Bowater into the carriage. How demure a greeting we exchanged when, the maid and I having seated onrselves together under its hood, my glance fell upon the bloodstone brooch pinned conspicuously for the occasion near the topmost button of her trim, outdoor jacket. It gave me so much confidence that even the sudden clatter of conversation that gushed out over me in the doorway of Lady Pollacke's drawing-room failed to be disconcerting. The long, flowery room was thronged with company, and everybody was talking to everybody else. On my entry, as if a seraph had spoken, the busy tongues sank instantly to a hush. I stood stilettoed by a score of eyes. But Sir Walter had been keeping good watch for me, and I at once delivered my great pot into his pink, outstretched hands. "My dear, dear young lady," he cried, stooping plumply over me, "the pleasure yon give me! A little masterpiece: and real old Nankin. Alas, my poor Hypnos !" "But it is me. me" I cried. "If I could only tell yon!'' A murmur of admiration rippled across the room, in which I distinctly heard a quavering, nasal voice exclaim, "Touching, touching !"' The words — as if a pleasant sheep had bleated — came, I fancied, from a rather less fashionable lady with a lorgnette, who was sitting almost alone on the outskirts of the room, and who I afterwards discovered was only a widowed sister of Lady Pollacke's. But I could spare her but one startled glance, for, at the same moment. I was being presented to the your daughter of Lord B. Mrs Monnerie -at amply reclining in an immense gilded chair — a lady with a large and surprising counte- nance. Lady Pollacke's "younger" had misled my fancy. Far 199 Memoirs of a Midget from being the slim, fair, sylphlike thing of my expectations, Airs Monnerie cannot have been many years the junior of my godmother, Miss Fenne. Her skin had fallen into the queerest folds and puckers. Her black swimming eye under a thick eyebrow gazed down her fine, drooping nose at me with a dwelling expression at once indulgent, engrossed, and amused. With a gracious sweep of her hand she drew aside her voluminous silk skirts so that I could at once install myself by her side in a small cane-seated chair that had once, I should fancy, accommodated a baby Pollacke, and had been brought down from the nursery for this occasion. Thus, then, I found myself — the exquisitely self-conscious cen- tre of attention — striving to nibble a biscuit, nurse my child-size handleless tea-cup, and respond to her advances at one and the same time. Lady Pollacke hung like a cloud at sunset over us both, her cheek flushed with the effort to be amused at every sentence which Mrs Monnerie uttered and to share it as far as possible with the rest of her guests. "A little pale, eh ?" mused Mrs Monnerie, brooding at me with her great eye. "She wants sea-air ; sea-air — just to tinge that rose- leaf porcelain. I must arrange it." I assured her that I was in the best of health. "Not at all," she replied. "All young people boast of their health. When I was your age every thought of illness was as black as a visitation of the devil. That's the door where we must lay all such evils, isn't it, Mr Pellew?" A lean, tall, birdlike figure, the hair on his head still showing traces of auburn, disengaged itself from a knot of charmed spec- tators. . "Ah," he said. "But I doubt, now," he continued, with a little deprecating wave of his tea-cup at me, "if Miss M. can remember me. When we first met we were precisely one week old, precisely one week old." W by, like Dr Phelps, Mr Pellew referred to me as we I had not time to consider, for he was already confiding to Mrs Monnerie that he had never baptized an infant who more strenuously ob- jected to Holy Water than had T. I looked at his long, fair eye- lashes and the smile-line on his cheek as he bent with a sort of joc- 200 Memoirs of a Midget ular urbanity over her chair, but could not recall his younger face, though during my christening I must, of course, have gazed at him even more absorbedly. " 'Remember' you — I'll be hound she did," cried Mrs Monnerie with enthusiasm, "or was it the bachelor thumb? The mere;. you didn't drop her into the font. Can you swim, my dear?" "I couldn't at a week," I replied as archly as possible. "But I can swim; my father taught me." "But how wonderful!" broke our listeners into chorus. "There we are, then," asserted Mrs Monnerie; "sea-bathing! And are we a swimmer, Mr I 'ellew ?" Mr Pellew seemed not to have caught her question. He was assuring me that Miss Fenne had kept him well informed — well informed of all my doings. He trusted I was comfortable with the excellent Mrs Bowater, and hoped that some day I should he ahle to pay a visit to his rectory in Devonshire. "Mrs Pellew, he knew. ..." What he knew about Mrs Pellew, however, was never divulged, for Mrs Monnerie swallowed him up: — "Devonshire, my dear Mr Pellew! no, indeed. Penthouse lanes, redhot fields, staring cows. Imagine it! She would be dried up like a leaf. What she wants is a mild hut bracing sea- air. It shall be arranged. And who is this Mrs Bowater?" At this precise moment, among the strange faces far above me, I descried that of Mr Crimble, modestly peering out of the back- ground. He coughed, and in a voice I should scarcely have recog- nized as his, informed Mrs Monnerie that my landlady was "a most res — an admirable woman." He paused, coughed again, swept my soul with his -lance — "1 assure you, Mrs Monnerie, in view of — of all the circumstances, one couldn't be in better hands. In- deed the house is on the crest of the hill, well out of the town, yet not a quarter of an hour's walk from my mother's." "Hah!" remarked Mrs Monnerie, with an inflection that I am sure need not have brought a warmth to my cheek, or a duskier pallor to Mr Crdmble's. "You have perhaps heard the tragic story of Wanderslore," per- sisted Mr Crimble; "Miss M.'s — er — lodgings are immediately ad- jacent to the park." "I [ah !" repeated Mrs Monnerie, even more emphatically. "Mrs Bowater, eh? Well, 1 must see for myself. And I'm told. Miss M.," she swept down at me, "that you have a beautiful gift for 201 Memoirs of a Midget recitation." She looked round, patted her lap imperiously, and cried, "Come, now, who's to break the ice ?" In fact, no doubt, Airs Monnerie was not so arbitrary a mistress of Lady Pollacke's little ceremony as this account of it may sug- gest. But that is how she impressed me at the time. She the sun, and I the least— but I hope not the least grateful— of her obsequi- ous planets. Lady Pollacke at any rate set immediately to breaking the ice. She prevailed upon a Miss Templemaine to sing. And we all sat mute. I liked Miss Templemaine's appearance — brown hair, straight nose, dark eyelashes, pretty fringe beneath her peak-brimmed hat. But I was a little distressed by her song, which, so far as I could gather, was about two persons with more or less broken hearts who were compelled to part and said, "Ah" for a long time. Only physically distressed, however, for though I seemed to be shaken in its strains like a linnet in the wind, its adieux were protracted enough to enable me to examine the rest of the company at my leisure. Their eyes, I found, were far more politely engaged the while in gazing composedly down at the carpet or up at the ceiling. And when I did happen to intercept a gliding glance in my direc- tion, it was almost as if with a tiny explosion that it collided with mine and broke away. Mrs Monnerie's eyelids, on the other hand, with a faintly flutter- ing motion, remained closed from the first bar to the last — a method of appreciation I experimented with for a moment but quickly abandoned ; while at the first clash of the keys, Sir Walter had dexterously contrived to slide himself out of the room by the door at which he had unexpectedly entered it on my first visit. Such was the social situation when, after murmurs of gratitude and applause, Miss Templemaine took up her gloves and rose from the piano, and Mrs Monnerie reopened herself to the outer world with the ejaculation, "That's right. Now, my dear !" The summons was to me. My moment had come, but I was prepared for it. In my last ordeal I had broken down because I had chosen a poem that was a kind of secret thing in my mind. So, after receiving Lady Pollacke's letter, I had hunted about for a recitation as short, but less personal : one, I mean, whose senti- ments I didn't mind. And since Mrs Bullace had chosen two of Mrs Browning's pieces for her triumph on New Year's Eve, I argued that she knew the parish taste, and that I could do no better. 202 Memoirs of a Midget Of course, too, composure over what I was going to do was far more important than the composition. "Prepared for it," I said just now, but I meant it only in the sense that one prepares for a cold hath. There was still the plunge. I clasped my hands, stood up. Ceiling and floor gently rocked a little. There seemed to be faces — faces everywhere, and every eye in them was fixed on me. Thus completely encom- passed, I could find no refuge from them, for unfortunately my Hypnos was completely obliterated from view by the lady with the lorgnette. So I fixed my attention, instead, on the window, where showed a blank break of clear, fair, blue sky between the rain-clouds of afternoon. A nervous cough from Lady Pol- lacke plunged me over, and I announced my title : "The Weakest Thing," by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: — "Which is the weakest thing of all Mine heart can ponder? The sun, a little cloud can pall With darkness yonder ! The cloud, a little wind can move Where'er it listeth ; The wind, a little leaf above, Though sere, resisteth ! What time that yellow leaf was green, My days were gladder: Xow on its branch each summer-sheen May find me sadder ! Ah. me ! a leaf with sighs can wring My lips asunder — Then is my heart the weakest thing Itself can ponder. Yet, Heart, when sun and cloud are pined And drop together; And at a blast which is not wind. The forests wither, Thou, from the darkening, deathly curse To glory breakest, — The Strongest of the Universe Guarding the weakest." The applause, in which Miss Templemaine generously joined, 203 Memoirs of a Midget was this time quite unconcealed, and Lady Pollacke's sister's last "Touching" had hardly died away when Mrs Monnerie added her approbation. "Charming, perfectly charming," she murmured, eyeing me like a turtle-dove. "But tell me, my dear, why that particular poem? It seemed to have even less sense than usual." "No-o ; ye-es," breathed Lady Pollacke, and many heads nodded in discreet accord. "Doesn't — er — perhaps, Mrs Browning dwell rather assiduously on the tragic side of life?" Mr Crimble ventured to inquire. Lady Pollacke jerked her head, either in the affirmative or in the negative, and looked inquiringly at Mrs Monnerie, who merely drooped her eyes a little closer towards me and smiled, almost as if she and I were in a little plot together. "What do you say, Miss M. ?" "Well, Mrs Monnerie," I replied a little nervously, for all eyes were turned on me, "I don't think I know myself what exactly the poem means — the who's and what's — and what the blast was which was not wind. But I thought it was a poem which every one would understand as much as possible of." To judge from the way she quivered in her chair, though quite inaudibly, Mrs Monnerie was extremely amused at this criticism. "And that is why you chose it ?" "Well, yes," said I, "you see, when one is listening to poetry, not reading it to oneself, I mean, one hasn't time to pry about for all its bits of meaning, but only just to get the general — general — " "Aroma?" suggested Mrs Monnerie. "Yes — aroma." "And the moral?" The silence that hung over this little exchange was growing more and more dense. Luckless Miss M. ! She only plunged herself deeper into it by her reply that, "Oh, there's nothing very much in the moral, Mrs Monnerie. That's quite ordinary. At least I read about that in prose, why, before I was seven !" "Touch— began that further voice, but was silenced by a testy lift of Mrs Monnerie's eyelid. "Indeed!" she said, "and couldn't you. wouldn't you, now, give me the prose version? That's more my mark." "It was in a little nursery lesson-book of mine, called The 204 Memoirs of a Midget Observing Eye; letters about snails and coral insects and spiders and things " I paused. "A book, rather, you know. Eor Sun- days. But my— my family and I " "Oli, hut do," cried Lady 1'ollaeke in a voice I should hardly have recognized, "I adore snails." ( )nce more I was cornered. So 1 steeled myself anew, and stumbled through the brief passage in the squat, blue hook. It tells how, — "Tin' history of each one of the animals we have now considered, teaches us that our kind God watches over the wants and the pleasures of the meanest of His creatures. We see that He gives to them, not only the sagacity and the instruments which they need for catching their food, hut that He also provides them with some means of defending themselves. We learn by their history that the gracious Eye watches under the mighty waters, as well as over the earth, and that no creature can stop doing His will without His eye seeing it." 305 Chapter Twenty-Five ONCE more I sat down, but this time in the midst of what seemed to me a rather unpleasant silence, as if the room had grown colder : a silence which was broken only by the distant whistlings of a thrush. At one and the same moment both Mr Pellew and Mr Crimble returned to tea-cups which I should have supposed must have, by this time, been empty, and Lady Pollacke's widowed sister folded up her lorgnette. "My dear Miss M.," said Mrs Monnerie dryly, with an almost wicked ray of amusement in her deep-set eyes, "wherever the top of Beechwood Hill may be, and whatever supplies of food may be caught on its crest, there is no doubt that you have been provided with the means of defending yourself. But tell me now, what do you think, perhaps, Mr Pellczv's little 'instru- ments' are? Or, better still — mine? Am I a mollusc with a hard shell, or a scorpion with a sting?" Lady Pollacke rose to her feet and stood looking down on me like a hen, though not exactly a motherly one. But this was a serious question over which I must not be flustered, so I took my time. I folded my hands, and fixed a long, long look on Mrs Monnerie. Even after all these years, I confess it moves me to recall it. "Of course, really and truly," I said at last, as deferentially as I could, "I haven't known you long enough to say. But I should think, Mrs Monnerie, you always knew the truth." I was glad I had not been too impetuous. My reply evidently pleased her. She chuckled all over. "Ah," she said reposefully, "the truth. And that is why, I suppose, like Sleeping Beauty, I am so thickly hedged in with the thorns and briers of affection.. Well, well, there's one little truth we'll share alone, you and I." She raised herself in her chair and stooped her great face close to my ear: "We must know more of one another, my dear," she whispered. "I have taken a great fancy to you. We must meet again." 206 Memoirs of a Midget She hoisted herself up. Sir Walter Pollacke had hastened in and stood smiling, with arm hooked, and genial, beaming countenance in front of her. Mr Crimble had already vanished. Mr Pellew was talking earnestly with Lady Pollacke. Conver- sation broke out, like a storm-shower, on every side. For a while I was extraordinarily alone. Into this derelict moment a fair-cheeked, breathless lady de- scended, and surreptitiously thrusting a crimson padded birth- day book and a miniature pencil into my lap, entreated my autograph — "Just your signature, yon know — -for my small daughter. How she would have loved to be here!" This lady cannot have been many years older than I, and one of those instantaneous, fleeting affections sprang up in me as I looked up at her for the first and only time, and seemed to see that small daughter smiling at me out of her face. Alas, such is vanity. 1 tinned over the leaves to August 30th and found printed there, for motto, a passage from Shake- speare : — "He that has had a little tiny wit, — With hey, ho. the wind and the rain, — Must make content with his fortunes fit. For the rain it raineth every day." The 29th was little less depressing, from Samuel Taylor Cole- ridge : — "lie prayeth best who loveth besl All creatures great and small." This would never do. I bent double over the volume, turned back hastily three or four leaves, ,and scrawded in my name under August 25th on a leaf that bore the ^notation : — "Fie on't; ah, fie! 'tis an unweeded garden. That grows to seed; things rank anil gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this !" and beneath the quotation, the signature of Josephine Mildred Spratte. "Thank you, thank you, she will be overjoyed," blushed the 207 Memoirs of a Midget fair-haired lady. A sudden hunger for solitude seized upon me. I rose hastily, conscious for the first time of a headache, caused, no doubt, by the expensive and fumey perfumes in the air. Threading my way between the trains and flounces and trouser-legs around me, at last my adieux were over. I was in the porch — in the carriage. The breezes of heaven were on my cheek. My blessed parlourmaid was once more installed beside me. Yet even now the Pollacke faces were still flocking in my mind. The outside world was very sluggishly welling in. Looking up so long had stiffened my neck. I fixed my eyes on the crested back buttons of Lady Pollacke's stiff-looking coachman, and committed myself to my thoughts. It was to a Miss M., with one of her own handkerchiefs laid over her brows, and sprinkled with vinegar and lavender water, that Mrs Bowater brought in supper that evening. We had one of our broken talks together, none the less. But she persisted in desultory accounts of Fanny's ailments in her in- fancy; and I had to drag in Brunswick House by myself. At which she poked the fire and was mum. It was unamiable of her. I longed to share my little difficulties and triumphs. Surely she was showing rather too much of that discrimination which Lady Pollacke had recommended. She snorted at Mr Pellew, she snorted at my friendly parlour- maid and even at Mrs Monnerie. Even when I repeated for her ear alone my nursery passage from The Observing Eye, her only comment was that to judge from some fine folk she knew of, there was no doubt at all that God watched closely over the pleasures of the meanest of His creatures, but as for their doing His will, she hadn't much noticed it. To my sigh of regret that Fanny had not been at home to accompany me, she retorted with yet another onslaught on the fire, and the apophthegm, that the world would be a far better place if people kept themselves to themselves. "But Mrs Bowater," I argued fretfully, "if I did that, I should just— distil, as you might say, quite away. Besides, Fanny would have been far, far the — the grace 1 fullest person there. Mrs Monnerie would have taken a fancy to her, now, if you like." Mrs Bowater drew in her lips and rubbed her nose. "God forbid," she said. 208 Memoirs of a Midget But it was her indifference to the impression that I myself had made on Mrs Monnerie that nettled me the most. "Why, then, who is Lord B.?" I inquired impatiently at last, pushing back the bandage that had fallen over my eyes. "From what I've heard of Lord B.," said Mrs Bowater shortly, "he was a gentleman of whom the less heard of's the better." ' "But surely,'' I protested, "that isn't Mrs Monnerie's fault any more than Fanny's being so lovely — I mean, than I being a midget was my father's fault? Anyhow," I hurried on, "Mrs Monnerie says I look pale, and must go to the sea." Mrs Bowater was still kneeling by the fire, just as Fanny used to kneel. And, like Fanny, when one most expected an answer, she remained silent ; though, unlike Fanny, it seemed to be not because she was dreaming of something else. How shall I express it? — there fell a kind of loneliness between us. The severe face made no sign. "Would you — would you miss me?" some silly self within piped out pathetically. "Why, for the matter of that," was her sardonic reply, "there's not very much of you to miss." I rose from my bed, flung down the bandage, and ran down my little staircase. "Oh, Mrs Bowater," I said, burying my face in her camphory skirts, "be kind to me; be kind to me! I've nobody but you." The magnanimous creature stroked my vinegar-sodden hair with the tips of her horny fingers. "Why there, miss. I meant no harm. Isn't all the gentry and nobility just gaping to snatch you up? You won't want your old Mrs Bowater very long. What's more, you mustn't get carried away by yourself. You never know where that journey ends. If sea it is, sea it must be. Though, Lord preserve us, the word's no favourite of mine." "But suppose, suppose, Mrs Bowater," I cried, starting up and smiling enrapturedly into her face, "suppose we could go together !" "That," said she, with a look of astonishing benignity, "would be just what I was being led to suppose was the heighth of the impossible." At which, of course, we at once began discussing ways and means. But, delicious though this prospect seemed, I determined 209 Memoirs of a Midget that nothing should persuade me to go unless all hope of Fanny's coming home proved vain. Naturally, from Fanny memory darted to Wanderslore. I laughed up at my landlady, holding her finger, and suggested demurely that we should go off to- gether on the morrow to see if my stranger were true to his word. "We have kept him a very long time, and if, as you seem to think, Mrs Monnerie isn't such a wonderful lady, you may decide that after all he is a gentleman." She enjoyed my little joke, was pleased that I had been won over, but refused to accept my reasoning, though the topic itself was after her heart. "The point is, miss, not whether your last conquest is a wonderful lady, or a grand lady, or even a perfect lady for the matter of that, but, well, a lady. It's that's the kind in my ex- perience that comes nearest to being as uncommon a sort as any sort of a good woman." This was a wholly unexpected vista for me, and I peered down its smooth, green, aristocratic sward with some little awe. "As for the young fellow who made himself so free in his manners," she went on placidly, so that I had to scamper back to pick her up again, "I have no doubt seeing will be believing." "But what is the story of Wanderslore?" I pressed her none too honestly. The story — and this time Mrs Bowater poured it out quite freely — was precisely what I had been told already, but with the addition that the young woman who had hanged herself in one of its attics had done so for jealousy. "Jealousy ! But of whom ?" I inquired. "Her husband's, not her own : driven wild by his." "You really mean," I persisted, "that she couldn't endure to live any longer because her husband loved her so much that he couldn't bear anybody else to love her too?" "In some such measure," replied Mrs Bowater, "though I don't say he didn't help the other way round. But she was a wild, scattering creature. It was just her way. The less she cared, the more they flocked. She couldn't collect herself, and say, 'Here I am; who are you?' so to speak. Ah, miss, it's a sickly and dangerous thing to be too much admired." "But you said 'scattering': was she mad a little?" 210 Memoirs of a Midget "No. Peculiar, perhaps, with her sidelong, startled look. A lovelier I've never seen." "You've seen her !" "Thirty years ago, perhaps. Alive and dead." "Oh, Mrs Bowater, poor thing, poor thing." "That you may well say, for lovely in the latter rinding she was not." My eyes were fixed on the fire, but the picture conjured up was dark even amidst the red-hot coals. "And he ? did he die too ? At least his jealousy was broken away." "And I'm not so sure of that," said Mrs Bowater. "It's like the men to go on wanting, even when it comes to scrabbling at a grave. And there's a trashy sort of creature, though well- set-up enough from the outside, that a spark will put in a blaze. I've no doubt he was that kind." I thought of my own sparks, but questioned on : "Then there's nothing else but — but her ghost there now?" "Lor, gliosts, miss, it's an hour, I see, when bed's the proper place for you and me. I look to be scared by that kind of gentry when they come true." "You don't believe, then, in Destroyers, Mrs Bowater?" "Miss, it's those queer books you are reading," was the evasive reply. " 'Destroyers' ! Why, wasn't it cruel enough to drive that poor feather-brained creature into a noose !" Candle and I and drowsing cinders kept company until St Peter's bell had told only the sleepless that midnight was over the world. It seemed to my young mind that there was not a day, scarcely an hour, I lived, but that Life was unfolding itself in ever new and ravishing disguises. I had not begun to be in the least tired or afraid of it. Smallest of bubbles I might be, tossing on the great waters, but I reflected the universe. What need of courage when no danger was apparent? Surely one need not mind being different if that difference added to one's share in the wonderful Banquet. Even Wanderslore's story was only of what happened when the tangle was so harshly knotted that no mortal fingers could unravel it. And though my own private existence now had Mrs Monnerie — and all that she might do and mean and be — to cope with, as well as my stranger who was yet another queer story and as yet mine alone, these complications were enticing. One must just keep control of 211 Memoirs of a Midget them; that was all. At which I thought a little unsteadily of Fanny's "pin," and remembered that that pin was helping to keep her and Mr Crimble from being torn apart. He had seemed so peering a guest at Brunswick House. Mrs Monnerie hadn't so much as glanced at him when he had commented on Mrs Browning's poems. There seemed to be a shadow over whatever he did. It was as though there could be a sadness in the very coursing of one's blood. How thankful I felt that mine hadn't been a really flattering reply to Mrs Monnerie's question. She was extremely arrogant, even for a younger daughter of a lord. On the other hand, though, of course, the sheer novelty of me had had something to do with it, she had certainly singled me out afterwards to know what I thought, and in thoughts there is no particular size, only ef- fusiveness — no, pkrcingncss. I smiled to myself at the word, pitied my godmother for living so sequestered a life, and wondered how and why it was that my father and mother had so obstinately shut me away from the world. If only Fanny was coming home — what a difference she would find in her fretful Midge! And with that, I discovered that my feet were cold and that my head- ache had ached itself away. 212 Chapter Twenty-Six Tl 1 ERE had been no need to reserve the small hours for these ruminations. The next few days were wet and windy ; every glance at the streaming panes cast my mind into a sort of vacancy. The wind trumpeted smoke into the room ; I could fix my mind on nothing. Then the weather faired. There came "a red sky at night," and Spica flashing secrets to me across the darkness ; and that supper-time I referred as casually as possible to Mr Anon. "I suppose one must keep one's promises, Mrs Bowater, even to a stranger. Would half-past six be too early to keep mine, do you think? Would it look too — forward? Of course he may have forgotten all about me by this time." Mrs Bowater eyed me like an owl as I bent my cheeks over my bowl of bread and milk, and proceeded to preach me yet another little sermon on the ways of the world. Nevertheless, the next morning saw us setting out together in the crisp, sparkling air to my tryst, with the tacit understanding that she accompanied me rather in the cause of propriety than romance. Owing, I fancy, to a bunion, she was so leisurely a walker that it was I who must set my pace to hers. But the day promised to be warm, and we could take our ease. As we wandered on among the early flowers and bright, green grass, and under the beeches, a mildness lightened into her face. Over her long features lay a vacant yet happy smile, of which she seemed to be unaware. This set me off thinking in the old, old fashion ; comparing my lot with that of ordinary human beings. How fortunate I was. If only she could have seen the lowlier plants as 1 could — scarcely looking down on any, and of the same stature as some among the taller of them, so that the air around me was dyed and illumined with their clear colours, and bnrthened with their breath. The least and humblest of them — not merely crisp-edged lichen, 213 Memoirs of a Midget speckle-seed whitlow-grass and hyssop in the wall — are so close to earth, the wonder, indeed, is that common-sized people ever see them at all. They must, at any rate, I thought, commit them- selves to their stomachs, or go down on their knees to see them properly. So, on we went, Mrs Bowater and I, she pursuing her private musings, and I mine. I smiled to myself at remembrance of Dr Phelps and his blushes. After all, if humanity should "dwindle into a delicate littleness," it would make a good deal more difference than he had supposed. What a destruction would ensue, among all the lesser creatures of the earth, the squirrels, moles, voles, hedgehogs, and the birds, not to mention the bees and hornets. They would be the enemies then — the traps and poisons and the nets ! No more billowy cornfields a good yard high, no more fine nine-foot hedges flinging their blossoms into the air. And all the long-legged, "doubled," bloated garden flowers, gone clean out of favour. It would be a little world, would it be a happier? The dwarfed Mrs Bowaters, Dr Phelpses, Miss Bullaces, Lady Pollackes. But there was little chance of such an eventuality — at least in my lifetime. It was far likelier that the Miss M.'s of the world would continue to be a by-play. Yet, as I glanced up at my companion, and called to mind other such "Lapland Giants" of mine, I can truthfully avouch that I did not much envy their extra inches. So much more thin-skinned surface to be kept warm and unscratched. The cumbersome bones, the curious distance from foot and fingertip to brain, too ; and those quarts and quarts of blood. I shuddered. It was little short of a miracle that they escaped continual injury; and what an extended body in which to die. On the other hand, what real loss was mine — with so much to my advantage? These great spreading beech-trees were no less shady and companionable to me than to them. Nor, thought I, could moon or sun or star or ocean or mountain be any the less silvery, hot, lustrous, and remote, forlorn in beauty, or vast in strangeness, one way or the other, than they are to ordinary people. Could there be any doubt at all, too, that men had always coveted to make much finer and more delicate things than their clumsiness allowed? What fantastic creatures they were ! — with their vast mansions, 214 Memoirs of a Midget pyramids, palaces, scores of sizes too large either for carcass or mind. Their Satan a monster on whose wrist the vulture of the Andes could perch like an aphis on my thumb ; vet their Death but skeleton-high, and their Saviour of such a stature that well- nigh without stooping He could have laid His fingers on my head. Time's sands had been trickling East while I thought these small thoughts that bright spring daybreak. So, though we had loitered on our way, it seemed we had reached our destina- tion on the wings of the morning. Alas, Mrs Bowater's smile can have been only skin-deep; for, when, lifting my eyes from the ground I stopped all of a sudden, spread out my hands, and cried in triumph, "There ! Mrs Bowater" ; she hardly shared my rapture. She disapproved of the vast, blank "barn of a place," with its blackshot windows and cold chimneys. The waste and ruination of the garden displeased her so much that I grew a little ashamed of my barbarism. "It's all going to wrack and ruin," she exclaimed, snorting at my stone summer-house no less emphatically than she had snorted at Mrs Monnerie. "Not a walkable walk, nor the trace of a border ; and was there ever such a miggle-maggle of weeds ! A fine house in its prime, miss, but now, money melting away like butter in the sun." "But," said I, standing before her in the lovely light amid the dwelling dewdrops, "really and truly, Mrs Bowater, it is only going back to its own again. What you call a miggle- maggle is what these things were made to be. They are growing up now by themselves ; and if you could look as close as I can, you'd see they breathe only what each can spare. They are just racing along to live as wildly as they possibly can. It's the tameness," I expostulated, flinging back my hood, "that would be shocking to me." Mrs Bowater looked down at me, listening to this high- piped recitative with an unusual inquisitiveness. "Well, that's as it may be," she retorted, "but what I'm asking is, Where's the young fellow? He don't seem to be as punctual as they were when I was a girl." My own eyes had long been busy, but as yet in vain. "I did not come particularly to see him," was my airy reply. "Besides, we said no time — any fine day. Shall we sit down?" 215 Memoirs of a Midget With a secretive smile Mrs Bowater spread a square of water- proof sheeting over a flat stone that had fallen out of the coping of the house, unfolded a newspaper over the grass, and we began our breakfast. Neither of us betrayed much appetite for it ; she, I fancy, having already fortified herself out of her brown teapot before leaving the house, and I because of the odour of india-rubber and newspaper — an odour presently inten- sified by the moisture and the sun. Paying no heed to my fastidious nibblings, she munched on reflectively, while I grew more and more ill at ease, first because the "young fellow" was almost visibly sinking in my old friend's esteem, and next because her cloth-booted foot lay within a few inches of the stone beneath which was hidden Fanny's letter. "It'll do you good, the sea," she remarked presently, after sweeping yet one more comprehensive glance around her, "and we can only hope Mrs Monnerie will be as good as her word. A spot like this — trespassing or not — is good for neither man nor beast. And when you are young the more human company you get, with proper supervising, the better." "Were you happy as a girl, Mrs Bowater?" I inquired after a pause. Our voices went up and up into the still, mild air. "Happy enough — for my own good," she said, neatly screwing up her remaining biscuits in their paper bag. "In my days children were brought up. Taught to make themselves useful. I would as soon have lifted a hand against my mother as answer her back." "You mean she — she whipped you?" "If need be," my landlady replied complacently, folding her thread-gloved hands on her lap and contemplating the shiny toecaps of her boots. "She had large hands, my mother ; and plenty of temper kept well under control. What's more, if life isn't a continual punishment for the stoopidities and wicked- ness of others, not to mention ourselves, then it must be even a darker story than was ever told me." "And was, Mrs Bowater, Mr Bowater your — your first " I looked steadily at a flower at my foot in case she might be affected at so intimate a question, and not wish me to see her face. "If Mr Bowater was not the first," was her easy reponse, "he may well live to boast of being the last. Which is neither here nor there, for we may be sure he's enjoying attentive nursing. 216 Memoirs of a Midget Broken bones are soon mended. It's when things are disjointed from the root that the wrench comes." The storm-felled bole lay there beside ns, as if for picture to her parable. I began to think rather more earnestly than I had intended to that morning. In my present state of con- science, it was never an easy matter to decide whether Mrs Bowater's comments on life referred openly to things in general or covertly to me in particular. Plow fortunate that the scent of Fanny's notepaper was not potent enough to escape from its tomb. And whether or not, speech seemed less dangerous than silence. "It seems to me, Mrs Bowater," I began rather hastily, "at least to judge from my own father and mother, that a man depends very much on a woman. Men don't seem to grow up in the same way, though I suppose they are practical enough as men." "If it were one female," was the reply, "there'd be less to be found fault with. That poor young creature over there took her life for no better reason, even though the reason was turned inside out as you may say." I met the frightful, louring stare of the house. "What was her name?" I whispered — but into nothing, for, bolt upright as she was, Mrs Bowater had shut her eyes, as if in preparation for a nap. A thread-like tangle of song netted the air. We were, indeed, trespassers. I darted my glance this way and that, in and out of the pale green whispering shadows in this wild haunt. Then, realizing by some faint stir in my mind that the stiff, still, shut-away figure beside me was only feigning to be "asleep, I opened the rain-warped covers of my Sense and Sensibility, and began plotting how to be rid of her for a while, so that my soli- tude might summon my stranger, and I might recover Fanny's letter. Then once more I knew. Raising my eyes, I looked straight across at him, scowling there beneath his stunted thorn in a drift of (lowers like fool's parsley. He was making signs, too, with his hands. I watched him pensively, in secret amusement. Then swifter than Daphne into her laurel, instantaneously he vanished, and / became aware that its black eyes were staring 217 Memoirs of a Midget out from the long face of the motionless figure beside me, as might an owl's into an aviary. "Did you hear a bird, Mrs Bowater?" I inquired innocently. "When I was a girl," said the mouth, "sparrowhawks were a common sight, but I never heard one sing." "But isn't a sparrowhawk quite a large bird?" "We must judge," said Mrs Bowater, "not by the size, but the kind. Elseways, miss, your old friend might have been found sleeping, as they say, at her box." She pretended to yawn, gathered her legs under her, and rose up and up. "I'll be taking a little walk round. And you shall tell your young acquaintance that I mean him no harm, but that I mean you the reverse; and if show himself he won't, well, here I sit till the Day of Judgment." An angry speech curled the tip of my tongue. But the simple-faced flowers were slowly making obeisance to Mrs Bowater's black, dragging skirts, and when she was nearly out of sight I sallied out to confront my stranger. His face was black with rage and contempt. "That con- taminating scarecrow; who's she?" was his greeting. "The days I have waited !" The resentment that had simmered up in me on his behalf now boiled over against him. I looked at him in silence. "That contaminating scarecrow, as you are pleased to call her, is the best friend I have in the world. I need no other." "And I," he said harshly, "have no friend in this world, and need you." "Then," said I, "you have lost your opportunity. Do you suppose I am a child — to be insulted and domineered over only because I am alone? Possibly," and my lips so trembled that I could hardly frame the words, "it is your face I shall see when I think of those windows." I was speaking wiselier than I knew. He turned sharply, and by a play of light it seemed that at one of them there stood looking down on us out of the distance a shape that so had watched for ever, leering darkly out of the void. And there awoke in me the sense of this stranger's extremity of solitude, of his unhappy disguise, of his animal-like patience. "Why," I said, "Mrs Bowater! You might far rather be thanking her for — for " 218 Memoirs of a Midget "Curses on her," he clinked, turning away. "There was every- thing to tell you." "What everything?" "Call her back now," he muttered furiously. "That," I said smoothly, "is easily done. But, forgive me, I don't know your name." His eyes wandered over the turf beneath me, mounted slowly up, my foot to my head, and looked into mine. In their intense regard I seemed to be but a bubble floating away into the air. I shivered, and turned my back on him, without waiting for an answer. He followed me as quietly as a sheep. Mrs Bowater had already come sauntering back to our break- fast table, and with gaze impassively fixed on the horizon, pre- tended not to be aware of our approach. I smiled back at my companion as we drew near. "This, Mrs Bowater," said I, "is Mr Anon. Would you please present him to Miss Thomasina of Bedlam? - ' For a moment or two they stood facing one another, just as I have seen two insects stand — motionless, regardful, exchang- ing each other's presences. Then, after one lightning snap at him from her eye, she rose to my bait like a fish. "A pleasant morning, sir," she remarked affably, though in her Bible voice. "My young lady and I were enjoying the spring air." Back to memory comes the darkness of a theatre, and Mrs Monnerie breathing and sighing beside me, and there on the limelit green of the stage lolls ass-headed Bottom the W'eaver cracking jokes with the Fairies. My ( )beron addressed Mrs Bowater as urbanely as St George must have addressed the Dragon — or any other customary monster. He seemed to pass muster, none the less, for she rose, patted her sheet, pushed forward her bonnet on to her rounded temples, and bade him a composed good-morning. She would be awaiting me, she announced, in an hour's time under my beech tree. "I think, perhaps, two, Mrs Bowater," I said firmly. She gave me a look — all our long slow evening firelit talks together seemed to be swimming in its smile; and withdrew. The air eddied into quiet again. The stretched-out blue of the sky was as bland and solitary as if a seraph sat dream- ing on its Eastern outskirts. Mr Anon and I seated ourselves three or four feet apart, and I watched the sidelong face, so del- 219 Memoirs of a Midget icately carved against the green ; yet sunken in so sullen a stare. Standing up on his feet against the background of Mrs Bowater's ink-black flounces, with his rather humped shoulders and straight hair, he had looked an eccentric, and, even to my view, a stunted figure. Now the whole scene around us seemed to be sorting itself into a different proportion before my eyes. He it was who was become the unit of space, the yard-stick of the universe. The flowers, their roots glintily netted with spider- webs, nodded serenely over his long hands. A peacock butter- fly with folded colours sipped of the sunshine on a tuft nearly at evens with his cheek. The very birds sang to his size, and every rift between the woodlands awaited the cuckoo. Only his clothes were grotesque, but less so than in my parlour Mr Crimble's skirts, or even Lady Pollacke's treacherous bonnet. I folded my white silk gloves into a ball. A wren began tweeting in a bush near by. "I am going away soon," I said, "to the sea." The wren glided away out of sight amongst its thorns. I knew by his sudden stillness that this had been unwelcome news. "That will be very pleasant for me, won't it?" I said. "The sea?" he returned coldly, with averted head. "Well, / am bound still further." The reply fretted me. I wanted bare facts just then. "Why are you so angry? What is your name? And where do you live?" It was my turn to ask questions, and I popped them out as if from a Little by Little. And then, with his queer, croaking, yet captivating voice, he broke into a long, low monologue. He gave me his name — and "Mr Anon" describes him no worse. He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the house he lived in. But instead of apologizing for his ill-temper, he accused me of deceiving and humiliating him ; of being, so I gathered, a toy of my landlady's, of betraying and soiling myself. Why all this wild stuff only seemed to flatter me, I cannot say. I listened and laughed, pressing flat with both hands the sorry covers of my book, and laughed also low in my heart. "Oh, contempt !" he cried. "I am used to that." The words curdled on his tongue as he expressed his loathing of poor Mrs Bowater and her kind — mere Humanity — that ate and drank in musty houses stuck up out of the happy earth 220 Memoirs of a Midget like warts on the skin, that battened on meat, stalked its puddled streets and vile, stifling towns, spread its rank odours on the air, increased and multiplied. Monstrous in shape, automatic, blinded by hain't, abandoned by instinct, monkey-like, degraded! What an unjust tirade! He barked it all out at me as if the blame were mine; as if / had nibbled the Apple. I turned my face away, smiling, but listening. Did I realize, he asked me, what a divine fortune it was to be so little, and in this to be All. On and on he raved : I breathed air "a dewdrop could chill"; I was as near lovely naught made visible as the passing of a flower; the mere mattering of a dream. And when I died my body would be but a perishing flake of manna, and my bones . . . "Yes, a wren's picking," I rudely interrupted. "And what of my soul, please? Why, you talk like — like a poet. Besides, you tell me nothing new. I was thinking all that and more on my way here with my landlady. What has size to do with it? Why, when I thought of my mother after she was dead, and peered down in the place of my imagination into her grave, I saw her spirit — young, younger than I, and bodiless, and infinitely more beautiful even than she had been in my dreams, floating up out of it, free, sweet, and happy, like a flame — though shadowy. Besides, I don't see how you can help pitying men and women. They seem to fly to one another for company; and half their comfort is in their numbers." Never in all my life had I put my thoughts into words like this ; and he — a stranger. There fell a silence between us. The natural quietude of the garden was softly settling down and down like infinitesimal grains of sand in a pool of water. It had forgotten that humans were harbouring in its solitude. And still he maintained that his words were not untrue, that he knew mankind better than I, that to fall into their ways and follow their opinions and strivings was to deafen my ears, and seal up my eyes, and lose my very self. "The Self everywhere," he said. And he told me, whether in time or space I know not, of a country whose people were of my stature and slenderness. This was a land, he said, walled in by enormous, ice-capped mountains couching the furnace of the rising sun, and yet set at the ocean's edge. Its sand-dunes ring like dulcimers in the heat. Its valleys 221 Memoirs of a Midget of swift rivers were of a green so pale and vivid and so flower-encrusted that an English — even a Kentish — spring is but a coarse and rustic prettiness by comparison. Vine and orange and trees of outlandish names gave their fruits there ; yet there also willows swept the winds, and palms spiked the blue with their fans, and the cactus flourished with the tamarisk. Geese, of dark green and snow, were on its inland waters, and a bird clocked the hours of the night, and the conformation of its stars would be strange to my eyes. And such was the lowliness and simplicity of this people's habitations that the most powerful sea-glass, turned upon and searching their secret haunts from a ship becalmed on the ocean, would spy out nothing — nothing there, only world wilderness of snow-dazzling moun- tain-top and green valley, ravine, and condor, and what might just be Nature's small ingenuities — mounds and traceries. Yet within all was quiet loveliness, feet light as goldfinches', silks fine as gossamer, voices as of a watery beading of silence. And their life being all happiness they have no name for their God. And it seems — according to Mr Anon's account of it — that such was the ancient history of the world, that Man was so once, but had swollen to his present shape, of which he had lost the true spring and mastery, and had sunk deeper and deeper into a kind of oblivion of the mind, suffocating his past, and now all but insane with pride in his own monstrosities. All this my new friend (and yet not so very new, it seemed) — all this he poured out to me in the garden, though I can only faintly recall his actual words, as if, like Moses, I had smitten the rock. And I listened weariedly, with little hope of under- standing him, and with the suspicion that it was nothing but a Tom o' Bedlam's dream he was recounting. Yet, as if in disproof of my own incredulity, there sat I ; and over the trees yonder stood Mrs Bowater's ugly little brick house ; and beyond that, the stony, tapering spire of St Peter's, the High Street. And I looked at him without any affection in my thoughts, and wished fretfully to be gone. What use to be lulled with fantastic pictures of Paradise when I might have died of fear and hatred on Mrs Stocks's doorstep ; when everything I said was "'touching, touching"? "Well," I mockingly interposed at last, "the farthing dip's guttering. And what if it's all true, and there is such a place, 222 Memoirs of a Midget what then? How am I going to get there, pray? Would you like to mummy me and shut me up in a box and carry me there, as they used to in Basman? Years and years ago my father told me of the pygmy men and horses — the same size as yours, I suppose — who lived in caves on the banks of the Nile. But I doubt if I believed in them much, even then. I am not so ignorant as all that." The life died out of his face, just as, because of a cloud carried up into the sky, the sunlight at that moment fled from \\'anderslore. He coughed, leaning on his hands, and looked in a scared, empty, hunted fashion to right and left. "Only that you might stay," he scarcely whispered. "... I love you." Instinctively I drew away, lips dry, ,and heart numbly, heavily beating. An influence more secret than the shadow of a cloud had suddenly chilled and darkened the garden and robbed it of its beauty. I shrank into myself, cold and awkward, and did not dare even to glance at my companion. "A fine thing," was all I found to reply, "for a toy, as you call me. I don't know what you mean." Miserable enough that memory is when I think of what came after, for now my only dread was that he might really be out of his wits, and might make my beloved, solitary garden for ever hateful to me. I drew close my cape, and lifted my book. "There is a private letter of mine hidden under that stone," I said coldly. "Will you please be so good as to fetch it out for me? And you are never, never to say that again." The poor thing looked so desperately ill and forsaken with his humped shoulders— and that fine, fantastic story still ringing in my ears ! — that a kind of sadness came over me, and I hid my face in my hands. "The letter is not there," said his voice. I drew my fingers from my face, and glared at him from between them ; then scrambled to my feet. Out swam the sun again, drenching all around us with its light and heat. "Next time I come," I shrilled at him, "the letter will be there. The thief will have put it back again! Oh, how unhappy you have made me !" 223 Chapter Twenty-Seven I STUMBLED off, feeling smaller and smaller as I went, more and more ridiculous and insignificant, as indeed I must have appeared; for distance can hardly lend enchantment to any view of me. Not one single look did I cast behind ; but now that my feelings began to quiet down, I began also to think. And a pretty muddle of mind it was. What had enraged and em- bittered me so? If only I had remained calm. Was it that my pride, my vanity, had in some vague fashion been a punish- ment of him for Fanny's unkindness to me? "But he stole, he stole my letter,'' I said aloud, stamping my foot on a budding violet; and — there was Mrs Bowater. Evidently she had been watching my approach, and now smiled benignly. "Why, you are quite out of breath, miss; and your cheeks! ... I hope you haven't been having words. A better-spoken young fellow than I had fancied ; and I'm sure I ask his pardon for the 'gentleman.' " "Ach," I swept up at my beech-tree, now cautiously un- sheathing its first green buds in the lower branches, "I think he must be light in his head.'' "And that often comes," replied Mrs Bowater, with undis- guised bonhomie, "from being heavy at the heart. Why, miss, he may be a young nobleman in disguise. There's unlikelier things even than that, to judge from that trash of Fanny's. While, as for fish in the sea— it's sometimes wise to be contented with what we can catch." Who had been talking to me about fish in the sea — quite lately? I thought contemptuously of Pollie and the Dream Book. "I am sorry,"' I replied, nose in air, "but I cannot follow the allusion." The charge of vulgarity was the very last, I think, which Mrs Bowater would have lifted a finger to refute. My cheeks 224 Memoirs of a Midget flamed hotter to know that she was quietly smiling up there. We walked on in silence. (That night I could not sleep. I was afraid. Life was blacken- ing my mind like the mould of a graveyard. I could think of nothing but one face, one voice — that scorn and longing, thought and fantasy. What if he did love me a little? 1 might at least have been kind to him. Had I so many friends that I could afford to be harsh and ungrateful? How dreadfully ill he had looked when I scoffed at him. And now what might not have happened to him? I seemed lost to myself. No wonder Fanny . . . My body grew cold at a thought ; the palms of my hands began to ache. Half-stifled, I leapt out of bed, and without the least notion of what I was doing - , hastily dressed myself, and fled out into the night. I must find him, talk to him. plead with him, before it was too late. And in the trickling starlight, pressed against my own gatepost — there he was. "Oh," I whispered at him in a fever of relief and shame and apprehensivcness, "what are you doing here? You must go away at once, at once. I forgive you. Yes, yes; I forgive you. But — at once. Keep the letter for me till I come again." His hand was wet with the dew. "Oh, and never say it again. Please, please, if you care for me the least bit in the world, never, never say what you did again." I poured out the heedless words in the sweet-scented quiet of midnight. "Now — now go*'; I entreated. "And indeed, indeed I am your friend." The dark eyes shone quietly close to mine. He sighed, tie lifted my fingers, and put them to my breast again. He whispered unintelligible words between us, and was gone. No more stars for me that night. I slept sound until long after dawn. . . . Softly as thistledown the days floated into eternity; yet they were days of expectation and action. April was her fickle self; not so Mrs Monnerie. Her letter to Mrs Bowater must have been a marvel of tact. Apartments had been engaged for us at a little watering-place in Dorsetshire, called Lyme Regis. Mrs Bowater and I were to spend at least a fortnight there alone together, and after our return Mrs Monnerie herself was to pay me a visit, and see with her own eyes if her prescription had been successful. After that, perhaps, if I were so inclined, 225 Memoirs of a Midget and my landlady agreed with Mr Pellew that it would be good for me, I might spend a week or two with her in London. What a twist of the kaleidoscope. I had sown never a pinch of seed, yet here was everything laughing and blossoming around me, like the wilderness in Isaiah. Indeed my own looking-glass told me how wan and languish- ing a Miss M. was pining for change of scene and air. She rejoiced that Fanny was enjoying herself, rejoiced that she was going to enjoy herself too. I searched Mrs Bowater's library for views of the sea, but without much reward. So I read over Mr Bowater's Captain Maury — on the winds and monsoons and tide-rips and hurricanes, freshened up my Robinson Crusoe, and dreamed of the Angels with the Vials. In the midst of my packing (and I spread it out for sheer amusement's sake), Mr Crimble called again. He looked nervous, gloomy, and hollow-eyed. I was fast becoming a mistress in affairs of the sensibilities. Yet, when, kneeling over my open trunk, I heard him in the porch, I mimicked Fanny's "Dash!" and wished to goodness he had postponed his visit until only echo could have answered his knock. It fretted me to be bothered with him. And now? What would I not give to be able to say I had done my best and utmost to help him when he wanted it? Here is a riddle I can find no answer to, however long I live: How is it that our eyes cannot foresee, our very hearts cannot forefeel, the future? And how should we act if that future were plain before us? Yet, even then, what could I have said to him to comfort him? Really and truly I had no candle with which to see into that dark mind. In actual fact my task was difficult and delicate enough. In spite of her vow not to write again, yet another letter had mean- while come from Fanny. If Mr Crimble's had afforded "a ray of hope," this had shut it clean away. It was full of temporizings, wheedlings, evasions — and brimming over with Fanny. It suggested, too, that Mrs Bowater must have misread the name of her holiday place. The half-legible printing of the postmark on the envelope — fortunately I had intercepted the postman — did not even begin with an M. And no address was given within. I was to tell Mr Crimble that Fanny was 226 Memoirs of a Midget over-tired and depressed by the term's work, that she simply couldn't set her "weary mind" to anything, and as for decisions : — "He seems to think only of himself. You couldn't helieve, Midgetina, what nonsense the man talks. He can't see that all poor Fanny's future is at stake, hody and soul. Tell him if he wants her to smile, he must sit in patience on a pedestal, and smile too. One simply can't trust the poor creature with cold, sober facts. His mother, now — why, I could read it in your own polite little description of her at your Grand Reception — she smiles and smiles. So did the Cheshire Cat. " 'But oh, dear Fanny, time and your own true self, God helping, would win her over.' So writes H. C. That's candid enough, if you look into it; but it isn't sense. Once hostile, old ladies are not won over. They don't care much for mind in the young. Any- how, one look at me was enough for her — and it was followed by a sharp little peer at poor Harold ! She guessed. So you see, my dear, even for youthful things, like you and me, time gathers roses a jolly sight faster than we can, and it would have to be the fait accompli, before a word is breathed to her. That is, if I could take a deep breath and say, Yes. "But I can't. I ask you : Can you see Fanny Bowater a Right Reverendissima? No, nor can I. And not even gaiters or an apron here and now would settle the question off-hand. Why I confide all this in you (why, for that matter, it has all been confided, in me), I know not. You want nothing, and if you did, you wouldn't want it long. Now, would you? Perhaps that is the secret. But Fanny wants a good deal. She cannot even guess how much. So, while Miss Stebbings and Beechwood Hill for ever and ever would be hell before purgatory, H. C. and St Peter's would be merely the same thing, with the fires out. And I am quite sure that, given a chance, heaven is our home. "Oh, Midgetina, I listen to all this; mumbling my heart like a dog a bone. What the devil lias it got to do with vie, T ask myself? Who set the infernal trap? If only I could stop thinking and mocking and find some one — not 'to love me' (between ourselves, there are far too many of them already), but capable of making me love him. They say a woman can't be driven. I disagree. She can be driven — mad. And apart from that, though twenty men only succeed in giving me hydrophobia, one could persuade me to drink, if only his name was Mr Right, as mother succinctly puts it. "But first and last, I am having a real, if not a particularly saga- cious, holiday, and can take care of myself. And next and last, play, 227 Memoirs of a Midget I beseech you, the tiny good Samaritan between me and poor, plod- ding, blinded H. C. — even if he does eventually have to go on to Jericho. "And I shall ever remain, your most afrec. — F." How all this baffled me. I tried, but dismally failed, to pour a trickle of wine and oil into Mr Crimble's wounded heart, for his sake and for mine, not for Fanny's, for I knew in myself that his "Jericho'' was already within view. "I don't understand her; I don't understand her," he kept repeating, crushing his soft hat in his small, square hands. "I cannot reach her; I am not in touch with her." Out of the fount of my womanly wisdom I reminded him how young she was, how clever, and how much flattered. "You know, then, there are — others ?" he gulped, darkly meeting me. "That, surely, is what makes her so precious," I falsely in- sinuated. He gazed at me, his eyes like an immense, empty shop- window. "That thought puts I can't," and he twisted his head on his shoulders as if shadows were around him; "I can't bear to think of her and — with — others. It unbalances me. But how can you understand? ... A sealed book. Last night I sat at my window. It was raining. I know not the hour: and Spring!" He clutched at his knees, stooping for- ward. "I repudiated myself, thrust myself out. Oh, believe me, we are not alone. And there and then I resolved to lay the whole matter before" — his glance groped towards the door — "before, in fact, her mother. She is a woman of sagacity, of proper feeling in her station, though how she came to be the mother of But that's neither here nor there. We mustn't probe. Probably she thinks — but what use to consider it? One word to her — and Fanny would be lost to me for ever." For a moment it seemed his eyes closed on me. "How can I bring myself to speak of it?" a remote voice murmured from beneath them. I looked at the figure seated there in its long black coat; and far away in my mind whistled an ecstatic bird — "The sea ! the sea! You are going away — out, out of all this." So, too, was Mr Crimble, if only I had known it. It was my 228 Memoirs of a Midget weak and cowardly acquiescence in Fanny's deceits that v speeding him on his dreadful journey. None the less, a wretched heartless impatience fretted me at being thus helplessly hemmed in by my fellow creatures. How clumsily they groped on. Why couldn't they be happy in just living free from the clouds and trammels of each other and of themselves? The selfish helplessness of it all. It was, indeed, as though the strange fires which Fanny had burnt me in — which any sudden thought of her could still fan into a flickering blaze — had utterly died down. Whether or not, I was hardened; a poor little earthen- ware pot fresh from the furnace. And with what elixir was it brimmed. 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 him- self 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 strug- gling in a net of hatred. 229 Memoirs of a Midget 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. 1 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. 230 Chapter Twenty-Eight Y IT, in spite of misgivings, no very dark foreboding com- panioned me that evening. With infinite labour I concocted two letters : — "Deak 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 any- thing 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, "% Miss Stebbings" : — "Dear Fanny, — He came again to-day 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 T 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. "PS. — 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, T 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 T do seems only to make things worse. Do write: and, though, of course, it isn't my affair, do have a 'sagacious' holiday, too." 231 Memoirs of a Midget 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 skv 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 farm-house, 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 Erondlets 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, 232 Memoirs of a Midget wayside flowers; and sometimes a robin llittered 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 lie hasn't a name. What did you mean by that? There can't he 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 sun- beams a thousand flies darted and zigzagged like motes of light, and the year's fir>t butterflies fluttered and languished. "But if I speak,'' I said, "listen, now, my voice is just swal- lowed 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 1 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 / 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 con- versed 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, 233 Memoirs of a Midget 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 marvel- lously 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; 234 Memoirs of a Midget 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 crime to the farm, But not in time. A cloud of hail had swirled down; beating on our heads and shoulders. It all hut swept me up into the .air. Catching hands, we hreasted and edged on up the rough, miry lane towards a thatched harn, open on one side and roofing a red and blue wagon. Under this we scrambled, and tingling all over with the bufferings 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. / would have made friends with him." We sate 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 im- possible for me. What's to be done now? — I thought to my- self. 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. 235 Memoirs of a Midget "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 enchant- ments 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 femi- nine vanity and satisfaction after feeding on that strange heart), 236 Memoirs of a Midget 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 sleep in the hay, I clambered up with his help into the cart and tucked my- self 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 con- tented 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 quiz- zical, 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 ! 237 Lyme Regis Chapter Twenty-Nine OUT of a cab from a livery stable Mrs Bowater and I alighted at our London terminus next morning, to find positively awaiting us beside the wooden platform a first-class railway carriage — a palatial apartment. Swept and garnished, padded and varnished — a miracle of wealth! At this very moment I seem to be looking up in awe at the orange-rimmed (I think it was orange) label stuck on the glass whose inscription I after- wards spelled out backwards from within: "Mrs Bywater and Party." As soon as we and our luggage were safely settled, an extremely polite and fatherly guard locked the door on us. At this Mrs Bowater was a little troubled by the thought of how we should fare in the event of an accident. But he re- assured her. "Never fear, ma'am: accidents are strictly forbidden on this line. Besides which" he added, with a solemn, turtle-like stare, "if I turn the key on the young lady, none of them young a-ogling Don Jooans can force their way in. Strict orders, ma'am." To make assurance doubly sure, Mrs Bowater pulled down the blinds at every stopping-place. We admired the scenery. We read the warning against pickpockets, and T translated it out of the French. After examining the enormous hotels de- picted in the advertisements, we agreed there was nothing like home comforts. Mrs Bowater continued to lose and find in turn our tickets, her purse, her spectacle-case, her cambric pocket- handkerchief, not to mention a mysterious little screw of paper, containing lozenges I think. She scrutinized our luxury with grim determination. And we giggled like two school-girls as we peeped together through the crevices of the blinded windows at the rich, furry passengers who ever and again hurried along, casting angry glances at our shrouded windows. Tt being so early in the year — but how mild and sweet a day — there were few occupants of the coach at Axminster. As 241 Memoirs of a Midget I had once made a (frequently broken) vow to do at once what scared me, I asked to be perched up on the box beside the lean, brick-faced driver. Thus giddily exalted above his three cantering roan horses, we bowled merrily along. With his whip he pointed out to me every "object of interest" as it went floating by — church and inn, farm and mansion. "Them's peewits," he would bawl. "And that's the selfsame cottage where lived the little old 'ooman what lived in a shoe." He stooped over me, reins in fist, with his seamed red face and fiery little eye, as if I were a small child home for the holidays. Evening sunlight on the hill-tops and shadowy in the valleys. And presently the three stepping horses — vapour jet- ting from their nostrils, their sides panting like bellows — dragged the coach up a hill steeper than ever. "And that there," said the driver, as we surmounted the crest — and as if for em- phasis he gave a prodigious tug at an iron bar beside him, "that there's the Sea." The Sea. Flat, bow-shaped, hazed, remote, and of a blue stilling my eyes as with a dream — I verily believe the saltest tears I ever shed in my life smarted on my lids as the spirit in me fled away, to be alone with that far loveliness. A desire almost beyond endurance devoured me. "Yes," cried hidden self to self, "I can never, never love him ; but he shall take me away — away — away. Oh, how I have wasted my days, sick for home." But small opportunity was given me for these sentimental reflections. Nearly at the foot of even another hill, and one so precipitous that during its rattling descent I had to cling like a spider to the driver's strap, we came to a standstill ; and in face of a gaping knot of strangers I was lifted down — with a "There ! Miss Nantuckety," from the driver — from my perch to the pavement. The lodgings Mrs Monnerie had taken for us proved to be the sea rooms in a small, white, bow-windowed house on the front, commanding the fishing-boats, the harbour, and the stone Cobb. I tasted my lips, snuffed softly with my nose, stole a look over the Bay, and glanced, at Mrs i Bowater. Was she, too, half-demented with this peculiar and ravishing experi- ence? I began to shiver; but not with cold, with delight. Face creased up in a smile (the wind had stiffened the skin), 242 Memoirs of a Midget cheeks tingling, and ravenously hungry, I watched the cere- monious civilities that were passing between landlady and land- lady: Mrs Bowater angular and spare; Mrs Petrie round, dumpy, smooth, and a little bald. My friend Mrs Monnerie was evidently a lady whose lightest word was Sesame. Every delicacy and luxury that Lyme out of its natural resources can have squandered on King George III. was ours without the asking. Mrs Bowater, it is true, at our sea-fish breakfast next morn- ing, referred in the first place to the smell of drains; next to fleas; and last to greasy cooking. But who should have the privilege of calling the Kettle black unless the Pot? More- over, we were "first-class" visitors, and had to complain of some- thing. I say "we" ; but since, in the first place, all the human houses that I have ever entered have been less sweet to the no^e than mere country out-of-doors; since next (as I discovered when I was a child) there must be some ichor or acid in my body unpleasing to man's parasites ; and since, last, I cannot bear cooked animals ; these little inconveniences, even if they had not existed solely in Mrs Bowater's fancy, would not have troubled me. The days melted away. We would sally out early, while yet many of Lyme's kitchen chimneys were smokeless, and would return with the shadows of evening. How Mrs Bowater managed to sustain so large a frame for so many hours together on a few hard biscuits and a bottle of cold tea, I cannot discover. Her mood, like our weather that April, was almost always "set fair," and her temper never above a comfortable sixty degrees. We hired a goat-chaise, and with my flaxen hair down my back under a sunbonnet, I drove Reuben up and down the Es- planade — both of us passable ten-year-olds to a careless ob- server. My cheeks and hands were scorched by the sun ; Mrs Bowater added more and more lilac and white to her outdoor attire; and Mrs Petrie lent her a striped, and once handsome parasol with a stork's head for handle, which had been left behind by a visitor — otherwise unendeared. On warm mornings we would choose some secluded spot on the beach, or on the fragrant, green-turfed cliffs, or in the Uplyme meadows. Though I could never persuade Mrs Bowater to join me, I sometimes dabbled in the sun in some ice-cold, shallow, seaweedy pool between the rocks. Then, while she read the newspaper, or crocheted, I also, over book or needle, 243 Memoirs of a Midget indulged in endless reverie. For hours together, with eyes fixed on the glass-green, tumbling water, I would listen to its enormous, far, phantom bells and voices, happier than words can tell, And I would lie at full length, basking in the heat, for it was a hot May, almost wishing that the huge furnace of the sun would melt me away into a little bit of glass : and what colour would that have been, I wonder? If a small heart can fall in love with the whole world, that heart was mine. But the very intensity of this greed and delight — and the tiniest shell or pebble on the beach seemed to be all but exploding with it — was a severe test of my strength. One late twilight, I remember, as we idled homeward, the planet Venus floating like a luminous water-drop in the primrose of the western sky, we passed by a low white-walled house beneath trees. And from an open window came into the quiet the music of a fiddle. What secret decoy was in that air I cannot say. I stopped dead, looking about me as if for refuge, and drinking in the while the gliding, lamenting sounds. Curiously perturbed, I caught at Mrs Bowater's skirt. Sky and darkening headland seemed to be spinning around me — melting out into a dream. "Oh, Mrs Bowater," I whispered, as if I were drowning, "it is strange for us to be here." She dropped herself on the grass beside me, brushing with her dress the scent of wild thyme into the dewy air, and caught my hands in hers. Her long face close to mine, she gently shook me; "Now, now; now, now!" she called. "Come back, my pretty one. See! It's me, me, Mrs Bowater. . . . The love she's been to me!" I smiled, groped with my hand, opened my eyes in the dimness to answer her. But a black cloud came over them; and the next thing I recall is waking to find myself being carried along in her arms, cold and half lifeless; and she actually breaking ever and again into a shambling run, as she searched my face in what seemed, even to my scarcely conscious brain, an extravagant anxiety. Four days afterwards — and I completely restored — we found on the breakfast table of our quiet sea-room an unusually bountiful post: a broad, impressive-looking letter and a news- paper for Mrs liowater, and a parcel, from Fanny, for me. Time and distance had divided me from the past more than I 244 Memoirs of a Midget had supposed. The very sight of her handwriting gave me a qualm. "Fanny ! Oh, my Heavens," cried a voice in me, "what's wrong now?" But removing the brown paper I found only a book, and it being near to my size as books go, I opened it with profound relief. My joy was premature. The book Fanny had sent me was by Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living and Dying: with Prayers containing the Whole Duly of a Christian. I read over and over this title with a creeping misgiving and dismay, and almost in the same instant, detected, lightly fastened between its fly-leaves, and above its inscription — "To Midgetina: In Memoriam" — an inch or two of paper, pencilled over in Fanny's minutest characters. A slow, furtive glance discovered Mrs Bowater far too deeply absorbed to have noticed my small movements. She was sitting bolt upright, her forehead drawn crooked in an unusual frown. An open letter lay beside her plate. She was staring into, rather than at, her newspaper. With infinite stealth I slipped Fanny's scrap of paper under the tablecloth, folded it small, and pushed it into my skirt pocket. "A present from Fanny," I cried in a clear voice at last. But Mrs Bowater, with drooping, pallid face, and gaze now fixed deep on a glass-case containing three stuffed, aquatic birds, had not heard me. I waited, watching her. She folded the newspaper and removed her spectacles. "On our return," she began inconsequently, "the honourable Mrs Monnerie has invited you to stay in her London house — not for a week or two ; for good. That's all as it should be, I suppose, seeing that pay's pay and mine is no other call on you." The automatic voice ceased with a gasp. Her thoughts ap- peared to be astray. She pushed her knotted fingers up her cheeks almost to her eyes. "It's said," she added with long, straight mouth, "that that unfortunate young man, Mr Crimble — is ill." She gave a glance at me without appearing to see me, and left the room. What was amiss? Oh, this world! I sat trembling in empty dread, listening to her heavy, muffled footfall in the room above. The newspaper, with a scrawling cross on its margin, lay beside Mrs Monnerie's large, rough-edged envelope. I could bear the suspense no longer. On hands and knees I craned 245 Memoirs of a Midget soundlessly forward over the white tablecloth, across the rank dish of coagulating bacon fat, and stole one or two of the last few lines of grey-black print at the foot of the column: "The reverend gentleman leaves a widowed mother. He was an only son, and was in his twenty-ninth year." "Leaves"; "was" — the dingy letters blurred my sight. Foot- steps were approaching. I huddled back to my carpet stool on the chair. Mrs Petrie had come to clear away the breakfast things. Stonily I listened while she cheerfully informed me that the glass was still rising, that she didn't recollect such weather not for the month for ten years or more. "You must be what I've heard called an 'alcyon, miss." She nodded her con- gratulations at me, and squinnied at the untasted bacon. "I am going for a breath of air, Mrs Petrie," came Mrs Bowater's voice through the crack of the door. "Will you kindly be ready for your walk, miss, in half an hour?" Left once more to myself, I heard the "alarm" clock on the mantelpiece ticking as if every beat were being forced out of its works, and might be its last. An early fly or two — my strange, familiar friends — darted soundlessly beneath the ceiling. The sea was shimmering like an immense looking-glass. More pungent than I had ever remembered it, the refreshing smell of seaweed eddied in at the open window. With dry mouth and a heart that jerked my body with its beatings, I unfolded Fanny's scrap of paper: — "Wise M., — I have thrown the stone. And now I am fey for my own poor head. Could you — and — will you absolutely secretly send me any money you can spare? £15 if possible. I'm in a hole — full fathom five — but mean to get out of it. I ask you, rather than mother, because I remember you said once you were putting money by out of that young lady's independence of yours. Notes would be best: if not, a Post Office Order to this address, somehow. I must trust to luck, and to your wonderful enterprise, if you would be truly a dear. It's only until my next salary. If you can't — or won't — help me, damnation is over my head: but I bequeathe you a kiss all honey and roses none the less, and am, pro tern., your desperate F. "PS. — Be sure not to give M. this address: and in a week or two we shall all be laughing and weeping together over the Prodigal Daughter." Fanny, then, had not heard our morning news. I read her 246 Memoirs of a Midget scribble again and again for the least inkling of it, my thoughts in disorder. That sprawling cross on the newspaper; this gibbering and dancing as of a skeleton before my eyes ; and "the stone," "the stone." What did it mean ? The word echoed on in my head as if it had been shouted in a vault. I was deadly frightened and sick, stood up as if to escape, and found only my own distorted face in Mrs I 'ctrie's flower-and-butterfly-painted chimney glass. "You, you !" my eyes cried out on me. And a furious storm — remorse, grief, horror — broke within. I knew the whole aw- ful truth. Like a Shade in the bright light, Mr Crimble stood there beyond the table, not looking at me, its face turned away. Unspeakable misery bowed my shoulders, chilled my skin. "But you said 'ill,' " I whispered angrily up at last at Mrs ''.(•water's bonneted figure in the doorway. "I have looked where the cross is. He is dead !" She closed the door with both hands and seated herself on a chair beside it. "I've trapsed that Front, miss — striving to pick up the ends. It doesn't hear thinking of: that poor, misguided young man. It's hid away. . . ." "What did he die of, Mrs Bowater?" I demanded. She caught at the newspaper, folded it close, nodded, shook her head. "Four nights ago," she said. And still, some one last shred of devotion — not of fidelity, not of fear, for I longed to pour out my heart to her— sealed my lips. Holy Living and Dying: Holy Living and Dying: T read over and over the faded gilt letters on the cover of Fanny's gift, and she in her mockery, desperate, too. "Damnation" — the word echoed on in my brain. But poor Mrs Bowater was awaiting no confession from me. She had out-trapsed her strength. When next I looked round at her, the bonneted head lay back against the rose- garlanded wallpaper, the mouth ajar, the eyelids fluttering. It was my turn now — to implore her to "come back" : and failing to do so, I managed at last to clamber up and tug at the bell-pull. 247 Chapter Thirty I SURVEYED with horror the recumbent, angular figure stretched out on the long, narrow, horsehair sofa. The shut eyes — it was selfish to leave me like this. "There, miss, don't take on," Mrs Petrie was saying. "The poor thing's coming round now. Slipping dead oft out of things — many's the time I've wished I could — even though you have come down for a bit of pleasuring.'' But it was Lyme Regis's solemn, round-shouldered doctor who reassured me. At first sight of him I knew Mrs Bowater was not going to die. He looked down on her, politely protesting that she must not attempt to get up. "This unseasonable heat, perhaps. The heart, of course, not so strong as it might be." He ordered her complete rest in bed for a few days — light nourishment, no worry, and he would look in again. Me he had not detected under the serge window-curtain, though he cast an uneasy glance around him, I fancied, on leaving the room. After remaining alone under the still, sunshiny window until I could endure it no longer, I climbed up the steep, narrow stairs to Mrs Bowater's bedroom, and sat a while clasping the hand that hung down from the bed. The blind gently ballooned in the breeze. Raying lights circled across the ceiling, as carriage and cart glided by on the esplanade. Fearful lest even my iinger-tips should betray me to the flat shape beneath the counter- pane, I tried hard to think. My mind was in a whirl of fears and forebodings ; but there was but one thing, supremely ur- gent, facing me now. I must forget my own miseries, and somehow contrive to send Fanny the money she needed. Somehow; but how? The poor little hoard which 1 had saved from my quarterly allowances lay locked up on Heechwood Hill in my box beneath my bed. By what conceivable means could I regain possession of it, unknown to Mrs Bowater? Conscience muttered harsh words in my ear as I sat there hold- 248 Memoirs of a Midget ing that cold, limp hand with mine, while these inward schem- ings shuttled softly to and fro. When my patient had fallen asleep, I got downstairs again — a more resolute, if not a hetter woman. Removing latch and hox keys from their ribbon round my neck, I enclosed them in an envelope with a letter: — "Dear Mr. Anon, — I want you, please, to help me. The large one of these two keys unlocks my little house door : the smaller one a box under my bed. Would you please let yourself in at Mrs Bowater's to-morrow evening when it's dark — there will be nobody there — take out Twenty Pounds which you will find in the box, and send them to Miss Fanny Bowatcr, the Crown and Anchor Hotel, B . I will thank you when I come. "Believe me, yours very sincerely, "M. M." It is curious. Many a false, pandering word had sprung to my tongue when I was concocting this letter in my mind beside Mrs Bowater's bed, and even with Mrs Petrie's stubby, ink-corroded pen in my hand. Yet some last shred of honesty compelled me to be brief and frigid. I was simply determined to be utterly open with him, even though I seemed to myself like the dark picture of a man in a bog struggling to grope his way out. I dipped my fingers into a vase of wallflowers, wetted the gum, sealed down the envelope, and wrote on it this address : Mr , Lodging at a cottage near the Farm, Xorth-west of Wanderslore, Beechwood, Kent. And I prayed heaven for its safe delivery. For Fanny no words would come — nothing but a mere bare promise that I would help her as soon as I could — an idiot's message. The next three days were an almost insupportable solitude. From Mr Anon no answer could be expected, since in my haste I had forgotten to give him Mrs Petrie's address. I brooded in horror of what the failure of my letter to reach him might entail. I shared Fanny's damnation. Wherever I went, a silent Mr Crimble dogged my footsteps. Meanwhile, Mrs Bowater's newspaper, I discovered, lay concealed beneath her pillow. At length I could bear myself no longer, and standing beside her bed, asked if I might read it. Until that moment 249 Memoirs of a Midget we had neither of us even referred to the subject. Propped up on her pillows, her long face looking a strange colour against their whiteness, she considered my request. "Well, miss," she said at last, "you know too much to know no more." I spread out the creased sheets on the worn carpet, and read slowly the smudged, matter-of-fact account from beginning to end. There were passages in it that imprinted themselves on my memory like a photograph. Mr Crimble had taken the evening Service that last day looking "ill and worn, though never in what may be described as robust health, owing to his indefatigable devotion to his ecclesiastical and parochial duties." The Service over, and the scanty congregation dispersed, he had sate alone in the vestry for so unusual a time that the verger of St Peter's, a Mr Soames, anxious to get home to his supper, had at length looked in on him at the door, to ask if his services were required any further. Mr Crimble had "raised his head as if startled," and "had smiled in the negative," and then, "closing the eastern door behind him," had "hastened" out of the church. No other human eye had encountered him until he was found at 11.27 p.m. in an outhouse at the foot of his mother's garden. "The head of the unfortunate gentleman was wellnigh severed from the body." "He was an only son, and was in his twenty-ninth year. Universal sympathy will be extended by all to the aged lady who is prostrated by this tragic occurrence." Propped on my hands and knees, fearful that Mrs Bowater might interrupt me before I was prepared, I stared fixedly at the newspaper. I understood all that it said, yet it was as strange to me as if it had been written in Hebrew. I had seen, I had known, Mr Crimble. Who, then, was this? My throat drew together as I turned my head a little and managed to inquire, "What is an inquest, Mrs Bowater ?" "Fretting out the why's and wherefore's," came the response, muffled by a handkerchief pressed close to her mouth. "And — this 'why'?" I whispered, stooping low. "That's between him and his Maker," said the voice. "The poor young man had set his heart on we know where. As we make our bed so we must lie on it, miss. It's for nobody to judge: though it may be a lesson." "Oh, Mrs Bowater, then you knew I knew." 250 Memoirs of a Midget "No, no. Not your lesson, miss. I didn't mean that. It's not for you to fret yourself, though I must say I have always made it a habit, though without prying, please God, to be aware of more than interference could set right. Fanny and I have talked the affair over till we couldn't look in each other's faces for fear of what we might say. But she's Mr Bowater's child, through and through, and my firm hand was not firm enough, maybe. You did what you could. It's not in human conscience to ask more than the natural frame can bear." Did what I could. ... I cowered, staring at my knuckles, and it seemed that a little concourse of strangers, heads close together, were talking in my mind. My eyes were dry ; I think the spectre of a smile had dragged up my lips. Mrs Bowater raised herself in her bed, and peered over at me. "It's the letters," she whispered at me. "If he hasn't de- stroyed them, they'll be read to the whole parish." I crouched lower. "You'll be thankful to be rid of me. I shall be thankful to be rid of myself, Mrs Bowater." She thrust a long, skinny arm clean out of the bed. "Come away, there ; come away," she cried. "Oh," I said, "take me away, take me away. I can't bear it, Mrs Bowater. I don't want to be alive." "There, miss, rest now, and think no more." She smoothed my hair, clucked a little low, whistling tune, as if for lullaby. "Why, there now," she muttered sardonically, "you might almost suppose I had been a mother myself !" There was silence between us for a while, then, quietly rais- ing herself, she looked down at me on the pillow, and, finding me to be still awake, a long smile spread over her face : "Why, we don't seem neither of us to be much good at daytime sleeping." 25 1 Chapter Thirty-One A MORNING or two afterwards we set out on our homeward journey — the sea curdling softly into foam on its stones, a solitary ship in the distance on its dim, blue horizon. We were a dejected pair of travellers, keeping each a solemn face turned aside at the window, thinking our thoughts, and avoiding, as far as we could, any interchange of looks that might betray them one to the other. For the first time in our friendship Mrs Bowater was a little short and impatient with me over difficulties and inconveniences which I could not avoid, owing to my size. Her key in the lock of the door, she looked down on me in the porch, a thin smile between nose and cheek. "No place like home there mayn't be, miss," she began, "but The dark passage was certainly uninviting; the clock had stopped. "I think I'll be calling round for Henry," she added abruptly. I entered the stagnant room, ran up my stairs, my heart with me — a nd paused. Not merely my own ghost was there to meet me ; but a past that seemed to mutter, Never again, never again, from every object on shelf and wall. Yet a faint, sweet, un- familiar odour lay on the chilly air. I drew aside the curtain and looked in. Fading on the coverlet of my bed lay a few limp violets, ivory white and faintly rosy. I was alone in the house, concealed now even from Mr Bowater's frigid stare. Yet at sight of these flowers a slight vertigo came over me, and I had to sit on my bed for a moment to recover myself. Then I knelt down, my heart knocking against my side, and dragged from out its hiding-place the box in which I kept my money. Gritty with the undisturbed dust of our absence, it was locked. I drew back, my hand on my mouth. What could be the meaning of this? My stranger had come and gone. Had he been so stupidly punctilious that, having taken out the twenty pounds, he had relocked an almost empty box ? 252 Memoirs of a Midget Or had he, at the last moment . . . ? This riddle distressed me so much that instantly I was seized with a violent head- ache. But nothing could he done for the present. I laid hy the violets in a drawer, pushed hack the box, and, making good a pretence at eating my supper as I could, prepared for the night. One hy one the clocks in hall and kitchen struck out the hours, and, the wind being in the East, borne on it came the chimes of St Peter's. Automatically I counted the strokes, turning this way and that, as if my life depended on this foolish arithmetic, yet ready, like Job, to curse the day I was born. What had my existence been but a blind futility, my thought for others but a mask of egotism and selfishness? Yet, in all this turmoil of mind, I must have slept, for suddenly I found myself stiff, drawn-up, and wideawake — listening to a cautious, reiterated tapping against my window-pane. A tallow night- light burned beside me in a saucer of water. For the first time in my life — at least since childhood — I had been afraid to face the dark. Why, I know not; but I at once leapt out of bed and blew out that light. The night was moonless, but high and starry. I peered through the curtains, and a shrouded figure became visible in the garden — Fanny's. Curtain withdrawn, we looked each at each through the cold, dividing glass in the gloom — her eyes, in the night-spread pallor of her skin, as if congealed. The dark lips, with an exaggerated attempt at articulation, murmured words, but I could catch no meaning. The face looked almost idiotic in these contortions. I shuddered, shook my head violently. She drew back. Terrified that she would be gone — in my dressing-gown and slippers I groped my way across the room and was soon, with my door open, in the night air. She had heard me, and with a beckon of her finger, turned as if to lead me on. "No, no," I signalled, "I have no key." With a gesture, she drew close, stooped, and we talked there together, muttering in the porch. "Midgetina," she whispered, smiling bleakly, "it's this wretched money. I must explain. I'm at my wit's end — in awful trouble — without it." Huddled close, I wasted no time in asking questions. She must come in. But this she flatly refused to do. Yet money, 253 Memoirs of a Midget money was her one cry: and that she must have before she saw her mother again. Not daring to tell her that I was in doubt whether or not my savings were still in my possession, I pushed her hand away as she knelt before me on the upper- most step. "I must fetch it," I said. By good fortune my money-box was not the weightiest of my grandfather's French trunks — not the brass-bound friend- in-need of my younger days, and it contained little but paper. I hoisted it on to my bed, and, as I had lately seen the porters do at the railway station, contrived to push under it and raise it on to my shoulder. Its edge drove in on my collar-bone till I thought it must snap. Thus laden, I staggered cautiously down the staircase, pushed slowly across the room, and, so, out into the passage and towards the rounded and dusky oblong of the open door. On the threshold Fanny met me, gasping under this burden, and at sight of me some blessed spirit within her seemed to give her pause. "No, no," she muttered, and drew back as if suddenly ashamed of her errand. On I came, however, and prudence prevailed. With a sound that might have been sigh or sob she snatched the load from me and gathered it in, as best she could, under her cloak. "Oh, Midgetina!" she whispered meaninglessly. "Now we must talk." And having wedged back the catch of my door, we moved quickly and cautiously in the direction of Wanderslore. We climbed on up the quiet hill. The cool, fragrant, night seemed to be luring us on and on, to swallow us up. Yet, there shone the customary stars ; there, indeed, to my amaze- ment, as if the heavenly clock of the universe had set back its hands on my behalf, straddled the constellation of Orion. Come to our beech-tree, now a vast indistinguishable tent of whispering, silky leaves, Fanny seated herself upon a jutting root, and I stood panting before her. "Well ?" she said, with a light, desolate laugh. "Oh, Fanny, 'well'!" I cried. "Can't you trust me ?" "Trust you?" "Oh, oh, mocking-bird! — with all these riches?" 254 Memoirs of a Midget I cast a glance up into the leafy branches, and seated myself opposite to her. "Fanny, Fanny. Have you heard?" " 'Heard,' she says !" It was her turn to play the parrot. "What am I here for, but to hear more? But never mind; that's all over. Has mother " '"All over,' Fanny!" I interrupted her. "All over? But, the letters ?" "What letters? - ' She stared at me, and added, looking away, "Oh, mine?" She gave out the word with a long, inexhaustible sigh. "That was all right. He did not hide, he burned. . . . Neither to nor from; not even to his mother. Every paper de- stroyed. I envy her feelings! He just gave up, went out, Exit. I envy that, too." "Not even to you, Fanny? Not a word even to you?" The figure before me crouched a little closer together. "They said," was her evasive reply, "that there is melancholia in the family." I think the word frightened me even more than its meaning. "Melancholia," I repeated the melodious syllables. "Oh, Fanny!" "Listen, Midgetina," her voice broke out coldly. "I can guess easily enough what's saving up for me when I come home — which won't be yet a while, I can assure you. I can guess, too, what your friends, Lady Pollacke and Co., are saying about me. Let them rave. That can't be helped. I shall bear it, and try to grin. Maybe there would be worse still, if worse were known. But your worse I won't have, not even from you. I was not his keeper. I did not play him false. I deny it. Could I prevent him — caring for me? Was he man enough to come openly? Did he say to his mother, 'Take her or leave her, I mean to have her' — as / would have done? No, he blew hot and cold. He temporized ; he — he was a coward. Oh, this everlasting dog-fight between body and mind ! Ages before you ever crept upon the scene he pestered and pestered me — until I have almost retched at the sound of church bells. What was it, J ask you, but sheer dread of what the man might go and do that kept me shilly-shallying? And what's more, Miss Wren, who told me to throw the stone? Pff, it sickens me, this paltering world. I can't and won't see things but with 255 Memoirs of a Midget my reason. My reason, I tell you. What else is a schoolma'am for? Did he want me for my sake? Who begged and begged that his beautiful love should be kept secret? There was once a philosopher called Plato, my dear. He poisoned Man's soul." Flesh and spirit, Fanny must have been very tired. Her voice fluttered on like a ragged flag. "But listen, listen!" I entreated her. "I haven't blamed you for that, Fanny. I swear it. I mean, you can't help not loving. I know that. But perhaps if only we had It's a dreadful thing to think of him sitting there alone — the vestry — and then looking up 'with a smile.' Oh, Fanny, with a smile ! I dare hardly go into his mind — and the verger looking in. I think of him all day." "And I all night," came the reply, barked out in the gloom. "Wasn't the man a Christian, then?'' "Fanny," I covered my eyes. "Don't say that. We shall both of us just suffocate in the bog if you won't even let yourself listen to what you are saying." "Well," she said doggedly, "be sure you shall suffocate last, Miss Midge. There's ample perch-room for you on Fanny's shoulder.'' I felt, rather than saw, the glance almost of hatred that she cast at me from under her brows. "Mock as you like at me," was my miserable answer, "I have kept my word to you — all but : and it was I who helped — Oh yes, I know that." "Ah ! 'all but,' " her agile tongue caught up the words. "And what else, may I ask?" I took a deep breath, with almost sightless eyes fixed on the beautiful, mysterious glades stretching beneath us. "He came again. Why, it was not very many days ago. And we talked and talked, and I grew tired, yes, and angry at last. I told him you were only making use of me. You were. I said that all we could do was just to go on loving you — and keep away. I know, Fanny, I cannot be of any account; I don't understand very much. But that is true." She leaned nearer, as if incredulous, her face as tranquil in its absorption as the planet that hung in the russet-black sky in a rift of the leaves. 256 Memoirs of a Midget "Candid, and candid," she scoffed brokenly, and all in a gasp. The voice trailed off. Her mouth relaxed. And suddenly my old love for her seemed to gush back into my heart. A burn- ing, inarticulate pity rose up in me. "Listen, Midgetina," she went on. "That was honest. And I can be honest, too. I don't care what you said. If you had called me the vilest word they can set their tongue to, I'd still have forgiven you. But would you have me give in? Go under? Have you ever seen Mother Grundy? I tell you, he haunts me — the blackness, the deadness. That outhouse! Do you suppose I can't see inside that? lie sits by my bed. I eat his shadow with my food. At every corner in the street his black felt hat bobs and disappears. If even he hadn't been so solemn, so in- significant ! . . ." Her low, torturing laugh shook under the beechen hollow. "And I say this'' — she went on slowly, as if 1 sat at a distance, "if he's not very careful I shall go the same way. I can't bear that — that kind of spying on me. Don't you suppose you can sin after death? If only he had given me away — betrayed me! We should at least have been square. But that," she jerked hack her head. "That's only one thing. I had not meant to humble myself like this. You seem not to care what humilia- tions I have to endure. You sit there, oh, how absurd for me, watching and watching me, null and void and meaningless. Yet you are human: you feel. You said you loved me — oh, yes. But touch me, come here" — she laid her hand almost fondly on her breast — "and he humanly generous, no. That's no more your nature than — than a changeling's. Contamination, perhaps)!" Her eyes fretted round her, as if she had lost her sense of direction. "And now there's this tongueless, staring ghost." She shud- dered, hiding her face in her hands. "The misery of it all." "Fanny, Fanny," I besought her. "You know I love you." But the words sounded cold and distant, and some deadly disinclination held me where I was, though I longed to comfort her. "And at times, I confess it. I have hated you too. You haven't always been very kind to me. I was trying to cure myself. You were curing me. But still I go on— a little." "It's useless, useless," she replied, dropping her hands into 257 Memoirs of a Midget her lap and gazing vacantly on the ground. I can't care; I can't even cry. And all you say is only pity. I don't want that. Would you still pity me, I wonder, if you knew that even though I had come to take this wretched money from you, I meant to taunt you, to accuse you of lying to me?" "Taunt," "lying." My cheek grew hot. I drew back my head with a jerk and stared at her. "I don't understand you." "There. What did I say ! She doesn't understand me," she cried with a sob, as if calling on the angels to bear witness to her amazement. "Well, then, let Fanny tell you, Miss M., who- ever and whatever you may be, that she, yes, even she, can under- stand that unearthliness, too. Oh, these last days ! I have had my fill of them. Take all : give nothing. There's no other means of grace in a world like this." "But you said 'taunt' me," I insisted, with eyes fixed on the box that lay between the blunt-headed fronds of the springing bracken. "What did you mean by that? I did my best. Your mother was ill. She fainted, Fanny, when the newspaper came. I couldn't come back a single hour earlier. So I wrote to — to a friend, sending him my keys, and asking him to find the money for you. I know my letter reached him. Perhaps," I hesitated, in dread of what might be hanging over our heads, "perhaps the box is empty." But I need not have wasted myself. The puzzle was not quite inexplicable. For the moment Fanny's miseries seemed to have vanished. Animation came into her face and voice and move- ments as she told me how, the night before, thinking that her mother and I might have returned from Lyme Regis, she had come tapping. And suddenly as she stood in the garden, her face close to the glass, an utterly strange one had thrust itself into view, and the figure of "a ghastly gloating little dwarfish creature" had appeared in the porch. At first she had supposed — but only for an instant — that it was myself. "Of course, mother had mentioned him in her let- ters, but" — and Fanny opened her eyes at me — "I never guessed he was, well, like that." Then in her folly, and without giving him the least oppor- tunity to explain his presence there, she had begun railing at him, and had accused him of forcing his way in to rob the house: 258 Memoirs of a Midget "And he stood there, hunched up, looking at me — out of my own house." The very picture of Fanny helplessly standing there at her own door, and of these two facing each other like that in the porch — this ridiculous end to my fine stratagem, filled me with a miserable amusement. I leaned back my head where I sat, shrilly and dismally laughing and laughing, until tears sprang pricklingly into my eyes. If any listener had been abroad in the woods that night, he would, I think, have hastened his departure. But Fanny seemed to be shocked at my levity. She peered anxiously into the clear night-glooms around us. "And what !" I said, still striving to regain command over myself. "What happened then? Oh, Fanny, not a policeman?" But her memory of what had followed was confused, or perhaps she had no wish to be too exact. All that I could win from her for certain was that after an angry and bitter talk between herself and Mr Anon, he had simply slammed my door behind him and dared her to do her worst. "That was pretty brave of him," I remarked. "Oh," said Fanny amiably, "I am not blaming your friend, Midgetina. He seemed to be perfectly competent." Yet even now I remained unsatisfied. If Fanny had come secretly to Beechwood, as she had suggested, and had spent the night with a friend, solely to hear the last tidings of Mr Crimble, what was this other trouble, so desperate that she had lost both her wits and her temper at finding Mr Anon there? Supposing the house had been empty? My curiosity overcame me, and the none too ingenuous question slipped from my tongue : "Did you want some of the money for mourning, then, Fanny?" Her dark, pale face, above the black, enveloping cloak, met my look with astonishment. "Mourning !" she cried, "why, that would be the very No, not mourning, Midgetina. I owe a little to a friend — and not money only," she added with peculiar intensity. "Of course, if you have any doubts about lending it " "Give, not lend," said I. "Yes, but how are we to get at it? I can't lug that thing about, and you say he has the key. Shall we smash it open?" The question came so hurriedly that I had no time to con- 259 Memoirs of a Midget sider what, besides money — and of course friendship — could be owed to a friend, and especially to a friend that made her clench her teeth on the word. "Yes, smash it open," I nodded. "It's only a box." "But such a pretty little box!" With knees drawn up, and shivering now after my outburst of merriment, I watched her labours. My beloved chest might keep out moth and rust, it was no match for Fanny. She wound up a large stone in her silk scarf. A few heavy and muffled blows, the lock surrendered, and the starlight dripped in like milk from heaven upon my hoard. "Why, Midgetina," whispered Fanny, delicately counting the notes over between her long, white fingers, "you are richer than I supposed — a female Croesus. Wasn't it a great risk ? I mean," she continued, receiving no answer, "no wonder he was so cautious. And how much may I take?" It seemed as if an empty space, not of yards but of miles, had suddenly separated us. "All you want," said I. "But I didn't— I didn't taunt you, now, did I?" she smiled at me, with head inclined to her slim shoulder, as if in mimicry of my ivory Hypnos. "There was nothing to taunt me about. Mayn't / have a friend?" "Why," she retorted lightly, mechanically re-counting the bits of paper, "friend indeed! What about all those Pollackes and Monneries mother's so full of ? You will soon be flitting to quite another sphere. It's the old friends that then will be left mourn- ing. You won't sit moon-gazing then, my dear." "No, Fanny," I said stubbornly, "I've had enough of that, just for the present." "Sst!" she whispered swiftly, raising her head and clasping the notes to her breast beneath her cloak, "what was that?" We listened. I heard nothing — nothing but sigh of new-born leaf, or falling of dead twig cast off from the parent tree. It was early yet for the nightingale. "Only the wind," said she. "Only the wind," I echoed scornfully, "or perhaps a weasel." She hurriedly divided my savings and thrust my share into my lap. I pushed it in under my arm. 260 Memoirs of a Midget "Good heavens, Midgetina !" she cried, aghast. "You are almost naked. How on earth was I to know?" I clutched close my dressing-gown and stumbled to my feet, trying in vain to restrain my silly teeth from chattering. "Never mind about me, Fanny," I muttered. "They don't waste in- quests on changelings." "My God!'' was her vindictive comment, "how she harps on the word. As if 1 had nothing else to worry about." With a contemptuous foot she pushed my empty box under cover of a low-growing yew. Seemingly Wanderslore was fated to en- tomb one by one all my discarded possessions. Turning, she stifled a yawn with a sound very like a groan. "Then it's au rcvoir, Midgetina. Give me five minutes' start. . . . You know I am grateful ?" "Yes, Fanny," I said obediently, smiling up into her face. "Won't you kiss me?" she said. "Tout comprendre, you know, e'est tout pardonncr." "Why, Fanny," I replied ; "no, thank you. I prefer plain English." Hut scarcely a minute had separated us when I sprang up and pursued her a few paces into the shadows, into which she had disappeared. To forgive all — how piteously easy now that she was gone. She had tried to conceal it, brazen it out, but unutterable wretchedness had lurked in every fold of her cloak, in the accents of her voice, in every fatigued gesture. Her very eyes had shone the more lustrously in the starlight for the dark shadows around them. But understand her — I could not even guess what horrible secret trouble she had been concealing from me. And beyond that, too — a hideous, selfish dread — my guilty mind was haunted by the fear of what she might do in her extremity. "Fanny, Fanny," I called falsely into the silence. "Oh, come back ! I love you ; indeed I love you." How little blessed it is at times even to give. No answer came. I threw myself on the ground. And I strove with myself in the darkness, crushing out every thought as it floated into my mind, and sinking on and on into the depths of unconscious- ness. « Oh, my dear, my dear," came the whisper of a tender, 261 Memoirs of a Midget guttural voice in my ear. "You are deathly cold. Why do you grieve so? She is gone. Listen, listen. They have neither love nor pity. And I — I cannot live without you." I sat up, black with rage. My stranger's face glimmered ob- scurely in the gloom. "Oh, if you spy on me again !" I rasped at him, " 'live without me,' what do I care? — you can go and " But, thank God, the die zvithout me was never uttered. I haven't that to haunt me. Some hidden strength that had been mine these few days melted away like water. "Not now; not now!" I entreated him. I hastened away. 262 London Chapter Thirty-Two AND then — well, life plays strange tricks. In a week or two London had swallowed me up. How many times, I won- der, had I tried in fancy to picture Mrs Monnerie's town hquse. How romantic an edifice fancy had made of it. Impres- sive in its own fashion, it fell far short of these ignorant dreams. It was No. 2 of about forty, set side by side, their pillared porticoes fronting a prodigious square. Its only "garden," chiefly the re- sort of cats, children, nursemaids, an old whiskered gentleman in a bath chair, and sparrows, was visible to every passer-by through a spear-headed palisade of railings. P>road paving-stones skirted its areas, and over each descent of steps hung a bell-pull. On cloudless days the sun filled this square like a tank with a dry glare and heat in which even my salamanderish body some- times gasped like a fish out of water. When rain fell out of the low, grey skies, and the scaling plane-trees hissed and the sparrows chirped, my spirits seemed to sink into my shoes. And fair or foul, London soot and dust were enemies alike to my eyes, my fingers, and my nose. Even my beloved cloud-burdened north-west wind was never quite free of smuts and grit ; and when blew the east ! But it must be remembered how ignorant and local I was. In my long carriage journey to Mrs Monnerie's through those miles and miles of grimed, huddling houses, those shops and hoardings and steeples, I had realized for the first time that its capital is not a part of England, only a sprawling human growth in it ; and though I soon learned to respect it as that. I could never see without a sigh some skimpy weed struggling for life in its bricked-up crev- ices. It was nearly all dead, except for human beings, and that could not be said of Lyndsey, or even of Reechwood Hill. Maybe my imagination had already been prejudiced by a col- oured drawing which Mr Wagginhorne had sent me once for a Valentine when I was a child. It hangs up now in that child's nur- sery for a memento that I have been nearly dead. In the midst of 265 Memoirs of a Midget it on a hill, in gold and faded carmine, encircled with great five- pointed blue stars, and with green, grooved valleys radiating from its castellated towers, is a city — Hierusalem. A city surmounted by a narrow wreathing pennon on which, inscribed in silver, are the words : "Who heareth the Voice of My Spirit ? And how shall they who deceive themselves resort unto Me?" Scattered far and near about this central piece, and connected with it by thin lines like wandering paths radiating from its gates across mountain, valley, and forest, lie, like round web-like smudges, if seen at a distance, the other chief cities of the world, Rome, Venice, Constantinople, Paris, and the rest. London sprawls low in the left-hand corner. The strongest glass cannot exhaust the skill and ingenuity of the maker of this drawing (an artist who, Mr Wagginhorne told me, was mad, poor thing — a man in a frenzy distemper — his very words). For when you peer close into this London, it takes the shape of a tusked, black, hairy boar, sprawling with hoofs outspread, fast asleep. And between them, and even actually diapering the carcass of the creature, is a perfect labyrinth of life — a high crowned king and queen, honey- hiving bees, an old man with a beard as if in a swoon, robbers with swords, travellers with beasts and torches, inns, a cluster of sharp- coloured butterflies (of the same proportion) fluttering over what looks like a clot of dung, a winding river, ships, trees, tombs, wasted unburied bodies, a child issuing from an egg, a phoenix tak- ing flight : and so on. There is no end to this poor man's devices. The longer you look, the more strange things you discover. Yet at distance of a pace or two, his pig appears to fade into nothing but a cloudy-coloured cobweb — one of the many around his bright-dyed Hierusalem. Now I cannot help wondering if this peculiar picture may not already have tinged a young mind with a curious horror of Lon- don ; even though my aversion may have needed no artificial aid. Still I must not be ungrateful. These were vague impressions ; and as an actual fact, Mrs Monnerie had transported me into the very midst of the world of rank and fashion. Her No. 2 was now my home. The spaciousness, the unnatural solitude, the servants who never so much as glanced at me until after my back was turned, the hushed opulency, the formality! Tt was impossible to be just my everyday Miss M. My feet never found themselves twirling me round before their mistress was aware of it. I all but 266 Memoirs of a Midget gave up gossiping with myself as I went about my little self- services. Parochial creature that I was — I missed Mrs Bowater's "homeli- ness." To have things out of proportion to my body was an old story. To that, needless to say, ] was perfectly accustomed. But here things were at first out of all proportion to my taste and habits, a very different thing. It is, in fact, extremely difficult in retrospect to get side by side again with those new experiences — with a self that was at one moment intoxicated and engrossed, and the next humiliated and desperately ill at ease, at the novelty of her surroundings. I had a maid, too, Fleming, with a pointed face and greenish eyes, who, unlike Mrs Bowater, did not snort, but sniffed at things. Whether I retired for the night or rose in the morning, it was always to the accompaniment of a half-audible sniff. And I was never perfectly certain whether that sniff was one of the mind, or of the body, or of both. I found it hard to learn to do little enough for myself. Fleming despised me — at least so I felt — even for emptying my wash-basin, or folding my nightgown. Worse, I was never sure of being alone : she stole about so softly on her duties. And then the "company." Not that the last black days at Beechwood were not even blacker for the change. At first I tried to think them quietly over, to ravel out my mistakes, and to get straight with my past. But I couldn't in all that splendour. I had to spend much more time in bewaring of faux pas, and in growing accustomed to being a kind of tame, petted animal — tame even to itself, I mean. So Mrs Bowater's went floating off into the past like a dingy little house on the edge of a muddy river. Amid that old horror and anxiety, even my dear Pollie's wedding day had slipped by unheeded. Flow often my thoughts went back to her now. If only she could have been my Fleming. I tried to make amends for my forget fulness — even to the ex- tent of pocketing my pride, and commissioning Fleming to pur- chase for me (out of the little stock of money left me by Fannv^ a cradle, as a wedding present for Pollie, and a chest of tools for her husband. Oddly enough, she did not sniff at this request. Her green eyes almost sparkled. At the very word, wedding, she seemed to revive into a new woman. And Pollie completely for- gave me : — 267 Memoirs of a Midget "Dear Miss M., — We was mother and all very sorry and grieved you couldn't come though it passed off very satisfactory. As for forgetting please don't mention the word, Lyndsey have never been the same since the old house was empty. It all passed off very satis- factory though with such torrents of rain there was a great pool in the churchyard which made everybody in high spirits. And William and I can't thank you enough for those beautiful gifts you have sent us. Will have been a carpenter since he was a boy but there's things there miss he says he never heard on in his born days but will be extreamly useful when he comes to know what for. And Mother says it was just like your good kind heart to think of what you sent me. You can't think how handsome it looks in the new-papered room and I'm sure I hope if I may say so it may be quite as useful as Will's tools, and its being pretty late to marry it isn't as if I was a slip of a girl. And of course I have mother. Though if any does come you may be sure it will be a Sunday treat being too fine for ordinary. "Please God miss I hope you are keeping well and happy in your new suroundings and that dream will come true. It was a dread- ful moment that day by the shops but I'm thankful all came well. If you ever writes to Mrs. B. I trust you will mention me to her kindly not being much of a letter writer. If you could have heard the things she said of you your ears would burn miss you were such a treasure and to judge from her appearance she must have seen her troubles. And being a married woman helps to see into things though thank God I'm well and happy and William hopes to keep me so. "Well I must close now trusting that you are in the best of health. Your old Pollie. "Miss Fenne have been very poorly of late so I've heard though not yet took to her bed — more peculiar than ever about Church and such like. Adam Waggett being W's oldest friend though not my choice was to have been Best Man but he's in service in London and couldn't come." But if I pined for Pollie's company, how can I express what the absence of Mrs Bowater meant to me? Even when I had grown used to my new quarters, I would sometimes wake my- self calling her name in a dream. She had been almost unendur- ably kind to me that last May morning in Wanderslore, when she had come to fetch me from yet another long adieu — to Mr Anon. After he had gone, she and I had sat on for a while in that fresh spring beauty, a sober and miserable pair. Miserable on my side 268 Memoirs of a Midget for miserable reasons. Then, if ever, had been the moment wherein to clear my breast and he in spirit as well as heart at one with her. Yet part for honesty and part for shame, I had re- mained silent. I could only comfort myself with remembering that we should soon meet again, and that the future might be kinder. Well, sometimes the future is kinder, but it is never the same thing as the past. "They may perhaps talk about that unfortunate . . . about that poor young Mr Crimble, miss," was one of my landlady's last re- marks, as she sat staring rigidly at the great, empty house. "We all take good care to spread about each other's horrors; and what else is a newspaper for? If so ; well, I shouldn't ask it, I suppose, lint I've been thinking maybe my Fanny wasn't every thing to blame. We've had it out together, she and I, though only by letter. She was frightened of me as much as anything, though goodness knows I tried to bring her up a God-fearing child. She had no one, as she thought, to go to — and him a weak creature for all his obstinacy and, as you might say, penned in by his mother and his cloth. They say the Cartholics don't marry, and there's nothing much to be wondered at in that. Poor young fellow, he won't bear much thinking on, even when he's gone out of mind. I'm fearing now that what's come about may make her wilder and harder. Help her all you can, if only in your thoughts, miss: she sets more store by you than you might guess." "Indeed, indeed, I will," I said. "You see, miss," Mrs Bowater monotoned on, "I'm nothing much better than an aunt for Fanny, with no children of my own for guidance; and him there helpless with his broken leg in Buenos Ayres." The long, bonneted face moved round towards me. "Do you feel any smouldering affections for the young gentleman that's just gone?" This was an unexpected twist to our talk, but, in some little con- fusion, I met it as candidly as I could. "I am fonder of Fanny — and, of course, of you, Mrs Bowater; oh, far, far. But — I don't quite know how to express it — I am, as you might say, in my own mind with him. I think he knows a little what T am, in myself I mean. And besides, oh, well, it isn't a miserable thing to feel that just one's company makes anybody happy." Mrs Bowater considered this reply for some little time. 269 Memoirs of a Midget "He didn't look any too happy j,ust now, to judge from his back view," she remarked oracularly. "And when I was . . . But there, miss, I'm thinking only of your comfort, and I'm not quite as comfortable as might be over that there Mrs Monnerie. Gen- erous she may be, though not noticing it much perhaps from a purse with no bottom to it, judging from what I've seen. God bless you, one way or the other. And perhaps you'll sometimes remember the bits of Sundays we've shared up there — you and the old Dragon." A smile and a tear battled for the dark eye that looked down on me. Indeed, seldom after came a Sunday evening with its clank- ing bells and empty, London hush, but it brought back to me with a pang my hymns and talks with "the old Dragon." Not that any one I ever saw at Mrs Monnerie's appeared to work so hard as to need a day of rest. There was merely a peculiar empty sensation on Sundays of there being nothing "to do." A flight of stone steps and a pillared porch led up to her great ornamental door. Beyond was a hall compared with which the marbles of Brunswick House were mere mosaic. An alabaster fountain, its jet springing lightly from a gilded torch held by a crouching faun, cooled, and discreetly murmured a ceaseless Hush! in the air. On either hand, a wide, shallow staircase ascended to an enormous gilded drawing-room, with its chairs and pictures; and to the library. The dining-room stood oppo- site the portico. When Mrs Monnerie and I were alone, we usu- ally shared a smaller room with her parrot, Chakka; her little Chinese dog, Cherry— whose whimper had a most uncomfortable resemblance to the wild and homesick cry of my seagulls at Lyme Regis— and her collections of the world's smaller rarities. It is only, I suppose, one more proof of how volatile a creature I used to be that I took an intense interest in the contents of these cabinets for a few days, and then found them nothing but a vexation. No doubt this was because of an uneasy suspicion that Mrs Monnerie had also collected me. She could be extremely tactful in her private designs, yet she "showed me off" in a fashion that might have turned a far less giddy head than her protegee's, and perhaps cannot have been in the best of taste. So sure had she been of me that, when I arrived, a room 270 Memoirs of a Midget on the first floor of No. 2 had already been prepared for my reception. A wonderful piece of fantasticalness — like a miniature fairy palace, but without a vestige of any real make-believe in it. It was panelled and screened with carvings in wood, in- laid with silver and mother-of-pearl — dwarfs and apes and mis- shapen gods and goddesses leering and gaping out at one from amidst leafy branches, flowers, and fruits, and birds, and butter- flies. The faintest sniff of that Indian wood — whatever it was — recalls to this day that nightmare scenery. Its hangings were of a silk so rich that they might have stood on edge on the floor. These screens and tapestries guarded a privacy that rarely, alas, con- tained a Miss M. worth being in private with. The one piece of chagrin exhibited by Mrs Monnerie in those early days of our acquaintance was at my insistence on bringing at least a few of my familiar sticks of furniture and chattels with me from Mrs Bowater's. Their plain Sheraton design, she thought, was barbarously out of keeping with the rest. It was ; but I had my way. Not the least precious of these old possessions, though dis- mal for its memories, was the broken money chest which Fanny had pushed in under the yew in the garden at Wanderslore. Tacked up in canvas, its hinges and lock repaired, it had been sent on to me a week or two after my farewells to Beech- wood, by Mr Anon. Inside it I found the nightgown I had buried in the rabbit's hole, Fanny's letter from under its stone, my Sense and Sensibility, and last, pinned on to a scrap of king- fisher coloured silk, a pair of ear-rings made qut of two old gold coins. Apart from a few withered flowers, they are the only thing I possess that came from Wanderslore. Long after- wards, I showed these ear-rings to Sir W. P. He told me they were quarter Rose Nobles of Edward III.'s reign, and only a quarter of a quarter of an ounce in weight. They weigh pretty heavy for me now, however. My arrangement with Mrs Monnerie had been that, however long I might stay with her, I should still be in the nature of a visitor; that No. 2, in fact, should be my town house, and Mrs Bowater's my country. But I was soon to realize that she intended Mrs Bowater to have a very small share in me. She pretended to be jealous of me, to love me for my own sweet sake; and even while I knew it was mere pretence, it left its 271 Memoirs of a Midget flattery on my mind; and for the first time in my life I feigned to be even smaller than I was; would mince my speeches, af- fect to be clever, even ogle the old lady, until it might be sup- posed we were a pair of queerly-assorted characters in a charade. Nevertheless, I had had the obstinacy to insist that I should be at liberty to stay with Mrs Bowater whenever I wished to do so; and I was free to invite any friend to visit me I chose. "And especially, my dear, any one an eighth as exquisite," Mrs Monnerie had kindly put it. It may seem a little strange that all these obligations should have been on her side. But Mrs Monnerie's whims were far more vigorous than most people's principles. The dews of her loving kindness descended on me in a shower, and it was some little time before I began to feel a chill. Not the least remarkable feature of No. 2 was its back view. The window of my room came down almost to the floor. It "commanded" an immense zinc cistern — George, by name — a Virginia Creeper groping along a brick wall, similar cisterns smalling into the distance, other brick walls and scores of back windows. Once, after contemplating this odd landscape for some little time, it occurred to me to speculate what the back view from the House of Life was like; but I failed to conceive the smallest notion of it. I rarely drew my curtains, and, oddly enough, when I did so, was usually in a vacant or dismal mood. My lights were electric. One simply twisted a tiny ivory button. At first their clear and coloured globes, set like tiny tulips in a candelabra, charmed my fancy. But, such is custom, I soon wearied of them, and pined for the slim, living flame of candles — even for my coarse old night-light swimming in its grease in a chipped blue and white saucer. 272 Chapter Thirty-Three MRS MONNERIE had rifled her collections for my use — pygmy Venetian glass, a silver-gilt breakfast and tea service, pygmy porcelain. There were absurd little mechanical knick-knacks — piping birds, a maddening little operatic clock of which I at last managed to break the mainspring, a musical chair, and so on. My bath was of jade ; my table a long one of ebony inlaid with ivory, with puffing cherub faces at each corner representing the four winds. My own few possessions, I must confess, looked not only worn but provincial by comparison. But I never surprised myself actually talking to any of Mrs Monneries's exquisite novelties as to my other dumb, old, wooden friends. She delighted in them far more than I. I suppose, really to enjoy such pomp and luxury, one should be positively born in the purple ; and then, I suppose, one must