Memoirs of a Midget, page 11
part #3 of James Tait Black Memorial Fiction Prize Winners Series
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, Phelps!” 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’s 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 almost 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 would 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?”
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 themselves out, and both, I knew, though I gave them no heed, sat gazing, 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, but 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. “Miss 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 programme.”
“No,” smiled Fanny, “I see no hope whatever. You forget, 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 astonishing. 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 entertaining 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 also, 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 midnight 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 fools! Ph! 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 neighbour 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. “Tonight!” she whispered. “And not a word, not a word!”
XIII
Was there suspicion in the face of Mrs. Bowater that evening? Our usual familiar talk dwindled to a few words this suppertime. 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 mockingbird 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, prepared for the least sound that would prove that Fanny had not forgotten 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 kitchen 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 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 me. But 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—Sirius. 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 exquisite 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 observatory. But this night the stars were left for a while unsignalled and unadmired. The crisped, frost-lined leaves scattered between the snakelike roots sparkled faintly. Years seemed to have passed away, dwindled in Time’s hourglass, since my previous visit. That Miss M. had ghosted herself away forever. 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 disclaim the two hands that lay in my lap. She was indeed more closely mine than they—and nearer in actuality than I had imagined.
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 faraway 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 watched. 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, sky-hung boughs the dark, slim figure. What consciousness had they, I wonder, of those odd humans at their roots?
“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 softly. “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?”
