Memoirs of a Midget, page 16
part #3 of James Tait Black Memorial Fiction Prize Winners Series
“Ah, here it is,” I exclaimed ingenuously, and lifting my Sense and Sensibility from where it lay on the floor beside 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 titlepage.
“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 standstill. “And when,” he continued in a small, constrained voice, and with a searching, almost appealing glance, “when Miss Bowater 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. 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 dimensions, 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, there, 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 sociability 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.”
And all in a moment I caught my first real glimpse of the Church—no more just a number of St. Peterses than I was so many “organs,” or Beechwood was so many errand boys, or, for that matter, England so many counties. It was an idea; my attention wandered.
“But he was very anxious about the concert,” I ventured to protest.
“I’ve no doubt,” said Mrs. Bowater shortly.
“But then,” I remarked with a sigh, “Fanny seems to make friends wherever she goes.”
“It isn’t the making,” replied her mother, “but the keeping.”
The heavy weeks dragged slowly by, and a one-sided correspondence is like posting letters into a dream. My progress with Miss 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 that 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 infinite 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 been on a desert island. I must confess this particular game soon grew a little wearisome; but I played on, thinking to please my partner, and that she had chosen it for her own sake. Until one evening, with a stifled sigh, she murmured the word, Cribbage! I was shuffling my own small pack at the moment, and paused, my eyes on their backs, in a rather wry amusement. But Fate has pretty frequently so turned the tables on me; and after that, “One for his nob,” sepulchrally broke 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 ones were scrawled, if possible 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 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’?”
Wanderslore
XVIII
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. I 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 burst 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 compared 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 following led on, and apparently past it. Breathless and triumphant, 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 knickknacks. 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 almost envy you, Midgetina. It must be fun to be like a tiny, round-headed pin in a pincushion 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 day 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 someone 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. I 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 I have received his letter and that I am giving it my earnest attention—let alone my prayers. Tell me exactly how he takes this answer; then I will write to you again. I am sure, Midgetina, in some previous life you must have lived in the tiny rooms in the Palace at Mantua—you are a born intrigante.
* * *
“In 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(dess) must intervene. But no. My head was dark and empty. I 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.
“P.S.—Burn this.
“P.P.S.—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 Midgetina—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 be 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 affec’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” kissed the 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 notepaper 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 magnified 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 armchair 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 stargazing. 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? 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 stranger had addressed me. The morning was intensely still. Sunbeams out 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 bushes around me were knobbed all over with wax-green buds. The enormous trees were faintly coloured in their twigs. A sun-beetle staggered, out among the pebbles at my feet. I glanced at my 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 be intelligent even if I was sentimental, I rose from my stone, and turned to go back. I thus faced the worn, small, stone house again. Instantly I was all attention. A curious feeling came over me, familiar, yet eluding remembrance. It meant that I must be vigilant. Cautiously I edged round to the other side of the angled wall, where lay the fallen tree. Hard, dark buds showed on its 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 stargazing—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 Henry seemed 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.
