But our brief hour was drawing to an end. We were now passing little groups of country people and children in the quiet evening. We ourselves talked no more. The old pony plodded up yet another hill; we went clattering down its deep descent; and there, in the green bowl of a meadow sloping down from its woody fringes above, lay scattered the bellying booths, the gaudy wagons and cages of the circus. All but hidden in the trees above them, a crooked, tarnished weather-cock glinted in the sunset afterglow. Lights twinkled against the dying daylight. The bright-painted merry-go-round with its staring, motionless, galloping horses was bathed in the shine of its flares, a thin plume of steam softly ascending from its brass-rimmed funnel.
A knot of country boys, gabbling at one another like starlings, shrilled a cheer as we came rattling over a stone bridge beneath which a stream shallowly washed its bank of osiers. I laughed at them, waved my hand. At this they yelled, danced in the road, threw dust into the air. Not, perhaps, a very friendly return; but how happy I was, all anxiety and responsibility gone now.
The faint, rank smell of the wild beasts mingling with the evening air, was instilling its intoxication in my brain. I longed for darkness, the din and glare; longed for my tent and the gaping faces, for the smoky wind to fan my cheek as I bobbed cantering round the ring. It must have been a ridiculously childish face that ever and again scrutinized my companion's. Nothing for me inthatlooking-glass! How slow a face his was; he was refusing to look at me. It dismayed and fretted me to find him so sombre and dour.
His glance shifted to and fro under a frown that expressed a restless anxiety. His silence seemed to reproach me. Oh, well, when the day was over, and Mademoiselle's finery packed up in its bundle again, and the paint washed off, and the last echo ofapplause from the crowded benches had died away, and my pay was safe in my pocket, then he would know that the stake I had played for had been my freedom, my very self. Then surely his heart would lighten, and he would praise me, and we could go in peace. Would he not realize, too, that even my small body had its value, and was admired in a dismal world that cared not a jot for the spirit that inhabited it?
The showman stood by the tent, a gaudy silk scarf knotted round his neck. My lean-breasted gipsy woman spangled there beside him, with her black hair looped round her narrow bony head, and her loose, dusty, puckered boots showing beneath her skirts. There was a clear lustre in the lamp-starred air; and the spectacle of man and woman, of resting wheel and cropping horse, meadow and hill, poured a livelong blessing into my heart. Even the cowed, enfeebled lion with the mange of age and captivity in his skin, seemed to drowse content, and the satin-skinned leopards—almost within pat of paw of the flaxen-haired girl in the white stockings who leaned idly against the wheel—paced their den as if in pride. It was the same old story: my heart could not contain it all. Yet to whom tell its secrets?
A roomier tent had been prepared for me. We were ushered into it by the showman with a mock obeisance that swelled the veins on his forehead almost to bursting. The gipsy's birdlike eyes pierced and darted from one to the other of us, her skinny hand concealing her mouth. I felt as light as a feather, and thankful that my mud-caked shoes and petticoats were hardly discernible as none too elegantly I scrambled down from the cart.
The showman watched me with that sly, covetous grin about his mouth that I knew so well, though the stare with which he had greeted Mr Anon had been more insolent than friendly. I had cut the time rather close, he told me, but better late than never! As for that long-nosed rat with the cage, he hadn't been much smitten with the looks of him; and he was not the man to ask questions of a lady, not he. Here I was, and he hoped I had come for good. A rough life but a merry. Up with the lark until down under the daisies; and every man jack of them ready to kiss the ground I walked on. And the Fat Woman—just pining good money away she was, with longing to mother the little stranger!
I nodded my head at him with a smile as worldly-wise as I couldmake it. "It's the last taste that counts, Mr Showman," I said politely. "Every one has been exceedingly kind to me; and my love, please, to the Fat Woman. This is my friend, Mr Anon. He has come to take care of me. We shall go back—go on together."
The showman broke into a laugh, but his face hardened again, as, grinding one jaw slowly on the other, he turned to Mr Anon. Maybe "the young gentleman" was anxious to enjoy a taste of the life on his own account, he asked me. Could he ride? A bit of steeplechasing? There was plenty of horseflesh—a double turn: Beauty and the Beast, now? Or perhaps another Spotted Boy? Love or money; just name the figure. Treat him fair and square, and he wouldn't refuse a genuine offer; though, naturally, every inch made a difference, and a foot twelve times as much. And looks were looks.
There was little enough to enjoy in the sound of all this. Apparently the mere sight of Mr Anon had soured the showman. Many of his words were Greek to me, and to judge from the woman's yelps of laughter their meaning was none of the daintiest. I shrugged my shoulders, smiled, spread out my hands, and with a word or two fenced him off, pretending to be flattered. He looked at the woman as if to say, There's manners for you! She made a sudden, ferocious grimace. We were a singular four in the tent.
But it would be false to profess that I hadn't a sneaking admiration for the man; and I kept glancing uneasily at the "young gentleman" who was so blackly ignoring his advances. To say the least of it, it was a little unintelligent of Mr Anon not to take things as they came, if only for my sake.
"But you must please try and help me a little," I pleaded, when the showman and the gipsy had left us to ourselves for a moment. "It's only his fun. He's really not a bad sort of man underneath. You can't say there's a Spirit of Evil in that great hulking creature, now can you? I am not the least bit afraid of him."
He glanced at me without turning his head. Involuntarily I sighed. Things never were so easy as one supposed or hoped they would be.
Already my fingers were busy at the knots of my bundle, and for a while, simply because what Mr Anon was saying was somonstrous and incredible, I continued to fumble at them without attempting to answer him. He was forbidding me to keep my word; forbidding me to show myself; just ordering me to come away. No, no; he must be crazy; I had never understood him. There must be some old worm in his mind. He was telling me in so many words that to lie a prey to the mob's curiosity had been a disgrace—soiling me for ever.
The cruel stupidity of it! With head bent low and burning cheek I heard his harsh voice knell on and on—not persuading or conciliating, or pleading with me—I could have forgiven him that easily enough; but flatly commanding me to listen and obey.
"For mercy's sake," I broke in hurriedly at last, "that's enough of that. If just sitting here and talking to one's fellow-creatures has smeared me over, as you say it has, why, I must wait till Jordan to be clean. You should have seen that great wallowing sow this evening.Shewasn't ashamed of herself. Can't you understand that I simply had to get free? You'd see it was for your sake, too, perhaps, if you had had the patience to listen. But there; never mind. I understand. You can't endure my company any longer. That's what it means. Well, then, if that is so, there's no help for it. You must just go. And I must be alone again."
But no: there was a difference, he stubbornly maintained. What was done, was done. He was not speaking of the past. I knew nothing about the world. It was my very innocence that had kept me safe; "and—well, the courage." My innocence! and the "courage" thrown in! But couldn't I, wouldn't Isee? he argued. The need was over now; he was with me; there was nothing to be afraid of; he would protect me. "Surely—oh, you know in your heart you couldn't have enjoyed all that!"
"Oh," said I poisonously, "so you don't think that to cheat the blackguard, as you call him, at the last moment—and please don't suppose I have forgotten what you have called other friends of mine—you don't think that to break every promise I have made wouldn't be wallowing worse than—— Oh, thank you for thewallowing, I shall remember that."
"But, my dear, my dear," he began, "I never—"
"I say I amnotyour dear," I broke in furiously. "One moment you dictate to me as if I were a child, and the next—— As if Ihadn't been used to that pretence, that wheedling all my life long. As if I had ever been treated like an ordinary human being—coddled up, smuggled about, whispered at! Why, a scullery maid's is Paradise compared with the lifeI'veled. And as for the vile mob and the rest of it, I tell you I've enjoyed every minute of them. Imakethem clap their great ugly hands: Imakethem ashamed of themselves; they can't help themselves; they just—— And I've comforted some of them too. What's more, I tell you I love them. They are my own people; and I'd die for them if they would only forget what's between us and—and share it all. You be careful; maybe I shall stay here for good.Theydon't wince at my company;theydon't come creeping and crawling. Why! aren't we all on show? Who set the world spinning? I tell you I hate that—that hypocrisy. What does it amount to, pray, but that you'd like the pretty, simpering doll all to yourself?"
A hooting screech broke the quiet that followed. The merry-go-round had set to its evening's labours. Faster and faster jangled the pipes and chiming:—
"I dreampt that I dwe-elt in mar-ar-ble halls,With vassals and serfs by my si-i-ide...."
"I dreampt that I dwe-elt in mar-ar-ble halls,With vassals and serfs by my si-i-ide...."
"I dreampt that I dwe-elt in mar-ar-ble halls,
With vassals and serfs by my si-i-ide...."
And at the sound, anger and pride died down in me. I lifted my face from the ground.
"I'm sorry," I muttered. "But you don't know what I have gone through these last weeks. And even if I were a hundred times as ashamed of myself as you think I ought to be, I couldn't—I can't go back. I have promised. It's written down. Only once more—this one night, and I swear it shall be the last." My mouth crooked itself into a smile. "You shall pray for me on the hill," I said, "then lead me off to a Nunnery yourself."
And still I could not whisper—Money. The word stuck in my throat.
He seemed not to have heard the miserable things I had been saying. Without a syllable of retaliation, he came a little nearer, and stood over me. We were all but in darkness now, though lights were beating on the canvas of our tent. It was quite, quite simple, he said. The showman was no fool. He couldn't compel me to exhibit myself against my will. A contract was a contract, of course, but what if both parties to it agreed to break it? And supposing the showman refused to agree—what then? Therewas a far better plan, if only I would listen. As soon as he had been made to realize that nothing on earth could persuade me to show myself again, he would accept any alternative: "I'll take your place," smiled Mr Anon.
Take my place!
So this was the plan he had been brooding over on our journey. No wonder he had been absent-minded. Cold with dread I gazed at him in the obscurity of the tent. A glimpse of Adam's rabbit face as he had stood brazening out his fears of the showman on that first night of adventure had darted through my mind. And this man—dwarfed, shrunken, emaciated.
A terrifying compassion gushed up into my heart, breaking down barriers that I never knew were there. It was the instant in my life, I think, when I came nearest to being a mother.
"S-sh," I implored him. "You don't understand. You can have no notion of what you are saying. I am a woman. They daren't harm me. But you! They—and besides," the craftier argument floated into my mind, "besides, Mrs Monnerie...."
But the sentence remained unfinished. The flap of the tent had lifted. The figure of the showman loomed up in the entry against the lights and the darkening sky. He was in excellent humour. He rattled the money in his pocket and breathed the smell of whisky into the tent, peering into it as if he were uncertain whether it was occupied or not.
"That's right, then," he began huskily, "that's as it should be. Ten minutes, your ladyship! And maybe the young gentleman would give a hand with the drum outside, while you get through with the titivating."
His shape was only vaguely discernible as he stood gently rocking there. It was Mr Anon who answered him. For a little while the showman seemed to be too much astounded to reply. Then he lost control of himself. A torrent of imprecations spouted out of his mouth. He threatened to call in the police, the mob. He shook his brass-ringed whip in our faces. I had never seen a man of his kind really angry before. He looked like a beast, like the Apollyon straddling the path in myPilgrim's Progress. His roaring all but stunned me, swept over me, as if I were nothing—a leaf in the wind. I think I could have listened to him all but in mere curiosity—as to an equinoctial gale when one is safe in bed—if he had not been so near, and the tent so smalland gloomy, and if Mr Anon had not been standing in silence within reach of his hands. But his fury spent itself at last. Slowly his head turned on his heavy shoulders. He seemed suddenly to have forgotten his rage and became coaxing and conciliatory. He had a sounding, calf-like voice, and it rose up and down. An eavesdropper outside the tent would have supposed he was on the verge of tears.
He was sure the young lady had no intention of cheating him, of "doing the dirty." Why he'd as lief send off there and then to the great house for the flunkey and the cage. What had I to complain of? Wasn't it private enough? Should he make it a level bob-a-nob, and no thruppenies? There was nothing to be afraid of. "God bless you, sir, she wouldn't cheat an honest man, not she."
People were swarming into the Fair from miles around, and real gentry in their carriages amongst them, like as had never been seen before. Did we want to ruin him? What should we think now, if we had paid down good money to come and see the neatest little piece of female shape as ever God Almighty smuggled out of heaven; and in we went, and stuck up there was a gent.—"a nice-spoken, respectable gent," he agreed, with a contemptuous heave of his massive shoulders, "but a gent no less, and him gowked up on the table, there, why, half as big again, and mouthing, mouthing like a...?" The hideous words poured on.
His great body gently rocked above me; his thumbs hooked-in under his armpits, his whip dangling. Till that moment I had scarcely realized that the scene in which I sat was real, I had been so harassed and stupefied by his noise. But now he had begun to think of what he was saying. In those last words an unnameable insult lurked. He was looking at us,seeingus, approaching us as if in a dream.
A horror of the spirit came over me, and, as if rapt away from myself, I stared sheer up at him.
"Beware, my friend," I cried up at him. "Have a care. I see a rope around your neck."
It was the truth. In the gloom, actually with my own eyes, I saw a noose loosely dangling there over his round, heavy shoulders.
So to this day I see my showman. His circus, I believe, continues to roam the English country-side, and by the mercy ofheaven he will die in his bed, or, better still, in the bracken. But I suppose, like most of us, he was a slave to his own superstitions, or perhaps it was my very littleness, combined with the memory of some old story he had heard as a boy, that intimidated him. His mouth opened; his whip shook; the grin of a wild beast swept over his face. But he said no more.
Yet his, none the less, was half the victory. Nothing on earth could now have dissuaded me from keeping my bargain. His words had bitterly frightened me. No one else should be "gowked" up there. I turned my back on him. He could go; I was ready.
But if I could be obstinate, so too could Mr Anon. And when at last our argument was over, I in sheer weariness had agreed to a compromise. It was that I should show myself; and he take my place in the circus. The showman's money was safe; that was allhecared about. If "Humpty" liked to petticoat himself up like a doxy and take my "turn" in the ring—why, it was a rank smelling robbery, but let him—let him. He bawled for the woman, flung a last curse at us, and withdrew.
We were alone—only the vacancy of the tent between us. Beyond the narrow slit I could see the merry jostling crowds, hoydens and hobbledehoys, with their penny squirts and pasteboard noses and tin trumpets. A strange luminousness bathed their faces and clothes, beautifying them with light and shadow, carpeting with its soft radiance the rough grey-green grass. The harvest moon was brightening. I went near to him and touched his sleeve. His lips contracted, his shoulder drew in from my touch.
"Listen," I pleaded. "One hour—that is all. That evening in Wanderslore—do you remember? All my troubles over. Yes, I know. I have brought you to this. But then we can talk. Then you shall forgive me."
He stretched out his hand. A shuffling step, a light were approaching. I fled back, snatched up my bundle, and climbed up into the darkness behind my canvas curtain. The next moment gigantic shadows rushed furiously into hiding, the tent was swamped with the flaring of the naphtha-lamp which the gipsy-woman had come to hang to the tent-pole to light my last séance.
A few hasty minutes, and, stealing out, I bade Mr Anon look. All Angélique's fair hair had been tied into a bob and drapedmantilla-fashion with a thick black veil. A black, coarse fringe torn from the head of a doll which I had found in the bottom of my trunk, dangled over her forehead. Her eyebrows were angled up like a Chinaman's. Her cheeks were chalk-white, except for a dab of red on the bone, and she was dressed in a flounced gown, jet black and yellow, which I had cobbled up overnight and had padded out, bust, hips, and shoulders to nearly double my natural size. A spreading topaz brooch was on her breast, chains of beads and coral dangled to her waist, and a silk fan lay on her arm.
I swept him a curtsey. "I dreamt that I dwe-elt in mar-arble halls," I piped out in a quavering falsetto. The folly of taking things so solemnly. What was humanity but a dressed-up ape? Had not my fair saint, Isobel de Flores, painted her cheeks, and garlanded her hair? And all his answer was to clench his teeth. He turned away with a shudder.
The drum reverberated, the panpipes squealed. I signed to him to hide himself in the recess among my discarded clothes, out of sight of peeping eyes, and arranged my person on the satin and rabbit-skins.
The tent flap lifted and the mob pressed in. Stretching out in a queue like a serpent, I caught a glimpse in the pale saffron moonlight of the crowd beyond. The sixpences danced in the tray. Once more the flap descended; my audience stilled. I looked from one to the other, smiling, defiant.
"Why, Bob said she was a pale, pinched-up snippet of a thing with golden hair," whispered a slip of a girl to a smooth little woman at her side.
"Ay, my Goff! And a waist like a wedding-ring," responded a wide mouth in a large red face, peering over.
"Ah, lady," warbled the Signorina, "fair to-day and foul to-morrow. 'Believe what you are told,' clanked the bell in the churchyard. Stuffing, my pretty; ask the goose!"
So went the Signorina's last little orgy. It would be a lie to profess that she, or rather some black hidden ghost in her, did not enjoy it. My monstrous disguise, that ferment of humanity, those owlish faces, the lurking shame, the danger, the poisonous excitement swept me clean out of myself. Anything to be free for a while from "pernickety" Miss M. But that, I suppose, is the experience of every gambler and wastrel and jezebel in the world, every one of his kind. One must not open the door too wide.
But this was not all. On other nights I had been alone. Now I was fervidly conscious of unseen, hungering eyes, watching every turn, and glance, and gesture. My dingy daïs was no longer in actuality. I lived in that one watcher's mind—in his imagination. And deep beneath this insane excitement lay a gentle, longing happiness. Oh, when this vile tinsel show was over, and these swarming faces had melted into thin air, and the moonlit empty night was ours, what would I not pour out for his peace and comfort. What gratitude and tenderness for all that he had been to me, and done, and said. Why, we seemed never even to have spoken to each other—not self to self, and there was all the world to tell.
Hotter, ranker grew the fetid atmosphere. I could scarcely breathe in my monstrous mummery. But clearly, the showman was making a rich bargain of me, and rumour of a Midget that was golden as Aphrodite one night, and black as pitch the next, only thickened the swarm. At length—long expected—there came a pause. Yet another country urchin flat on his stomach in the grass, with head goggling up at me from the hem of the canvas, was dragged out, screeching and laughing, by his breeches. But I had caught the accents of a well-known voice, and, crouching, with head wrenched aside to listen, I heard the gipsy's whining reply.
My moment had come. A pulse began its tattoo in my head. To remain helplessly lying there was impossible. I thrust myself on to my feet and, drawing back a pace or two, stood hunched up on the crimson spread of satin beside my wooden bolster. The canvas lifted, and one by one, the little party of "gentry" stooped and filed in.
Mrs Monnerie had paid for elbow room. It was the last "Private View" in this world we were to share together. The sight of her capacious figure with its great bonnet and the broad, dark face beneath, now suddenly become strange and hostile, filled me with a vague sense of desolation. Yet I know she has forgiven me. Had I not pocketed my "pretty little fastidiousness"?
What Fanny had planned to do if Miss M., plain and simple, had occupied the Signorina's table I cannot even guess. For the spectacle of the squat, black, gloating guy she actually found there, she was utterly unprepared. It seemed, as I looked at her, that myself had fainted—had withdrawn out of my body—like the spirit in sleep. Or, maybe, not to be too nice about it, I merely "became" my disguise. With mind emptied of every thought, I sank into an almost lifeless stagnancy, and with a heavy settled stare out of my black and yellow, from under the coarse fringe that brushed my brows, I met her eyes. Out of time and place, in a lightless, vacant solitude, we wrestled for mastery. At length the sneering, incredulous smile slowly faded from the pale, lovely face, leaving it twisted up as if after a nauseous draught of physic. Her gaze faltered, and fell. Her bosom rose; she coughed and turned away.
"Hideous! monstrous!" murmured Mrs Monnerie to the tall, expressionless figure that stood beside her. "The abject evil of the creature!"
Her dark, appraising glance travelled over me—feet, hands, body, lace-draped head. It swept across my eyes as if they were less significant than bits of china stuck in a cocoanut.
"No, Miss Bowater," she turned massively round on her, "you were perfectly right, it seems. As usual—but a dangerous habit, my dear. My little ransoming scheme must wait a bit. Just as well, perhaps, that our patient's dainty nerves should have beenspared this particular little initiation——. Could one have imagined it?"
Mr Padgwick-Steggall merely raised his eyebrows. "I shouldn't have cared to try," he drawled. And the lady beside him made a little mouth and laid her gloved hand on his arm.
"But, Madame is forgetting," whined the Signorina in a broken nosy English over her outspread fan, "Madame is forgetting. It's alive! Oh, truly!" and I clasped my arms even tighter across my padded chest, my body involuntarily rocking to and fro, though not with amusement.
"Madame is forgetting nothing of the kind," retorted Mrs Monnerie heartily. "The princess is an angel—Angélique—adorable." She turned to the gipsy woman and slipped a coin into the claw-like fingers. "Well, good-night," she nodded at me. "We are perfectly satisfied."
"La, la, Madame," my stuttering voice called after her, the words leaping out from some old hiding-place in my mind. "Je vous remercie, madame. Rien ne va plus.... Noir gagne!"
Her ebony stick shook beneath her hand. "Unspeakable," she angrily ejaculated, stumping her way out. "A positive outrage against humanity."
I shut my eyes, but the silent laughter that had once overtaken me in my bedroom at Mrs Bowater's scarcely sounded in my head. And Mrs Monnerie could more easily survive the little exchange than I. My body was dull and aching as if after a severe fall. The booth was filling for the last time.
Little life was left in the inert figure that faced this new assortment of her fellow-creatures: how strangely dissimilar one from another; how horrifyingly alike. A faint premonition bade me be on my guard. Under the wavering flame of the lamp, my glance moved slowly on from face to face, eye on to eye; and behind every one a watcher whom now I dared not wait to challenge. Empty or cynical, disgusted, malevolent, or blankly curious, they met me: none pitiful; none saddened or afflicted. On former nights—— Why had they grown so hostile? This, then, was to smother in the bog.
But one face there was known to me, and that known well. Hoping, perhaps, to take me unaware, or may it have been to snatch a secret word with me; Fanny had slipped back into thetent again, and was now steadily regarding me from behind the throng. A throng so densely packed together that the canvas walls bulged behind them, and the tent-pole bent beneath the strain. Yet so much alone were she and I in that last infinite moment that we might have been whispering together after death. And this time, suddenly overwhelmed with self-loathing, it was I who turned away.
When, stretching my cramped limbs, I drew back, exhausted and shivering, from the empty tent, I thought for an instant that the figure which sat crouching in the corner of the recess was asleep. But no: with head averted, sweat gleaming on his forehead, he rose to his feet. His consciousness had been my theatre in a degree past even my realization.
"Then, that is over," was all he said. "Now it is my turn."
The voice was flat and indifferent, but he could not conceal his disgust of what had passed, nor his dread of what was to come. Why, I thought angrily once more as I looked at him, why did he exaggerate things like this? Even a drowning man can sink three times, and still cheat the water. What cared I?—the night was nearly over. We should have won release. Why consider it so deeply? But even while I pleaded with him to let me finish the wretched business—every savour of adventure and daring and romance gone from it now—I was conscious of the trussed-up monstrosity that confronted him. He could not endure even a glance at my painted face. I stepped back from him with a hidden grimace. Past even praying for, then. So be it.
I heard the nimble stepping of the pony's hoofs on the worn turf. A sullen malice smouldered in its reddish, luminous eyes. When I clutched at its bridle it jerked back its sensitive head as if teased with a gadfly. The gipsy daubed vermilion on my friend's sallow cheeks. She shook out the tarnished finery she had brought with her and hung it round the stooping shoulders. She plastered down his black hair above his eyes, and thrust a riding-whip into his hand.
"There, my fine pretty gentleman," she smirked at him. "King of the Carrots! I lay even your own mammie wouldn't know you now, not even if you tried it straddle-legs. Tug at the knot, lovey; it's fast, but it won't strangle you. As for you, you——!" she suddenly flamed at me, "all very fly and cunning, but if I'dhad the fixing of it, you wouldn't have diddled me: not you. I knowyourshop. Slick off double quick, I warn you, or you'll have the mob at your heels. Now then, master!"
She grasped at the bridle, slapped the tooth-bared sensitive muzzle with her hand. I drew back, cowed and speechless. The sour thought died in my mind—Better, perhaps, if we had missed each other on the road. The pony jerked and snatched back its head.
He was gone, and now I was quite alone. What was there to fear? Only his contempt, his loathing of this last humiliation? But that, too, would soon be nothing but a memory. As always, the present would glide into the past. Yet a dreadful foreboding daunted me. Coarse canvas, walls and roof, table, beaten grass, my very hands and clothes had become menacing and unreal. The lamp hissed and bubbled as if at any moment it would burst asunder. Alone, afraid, ashamed, in the foulness of the tent, I looked around me in the silence; and beyond, above—the Universe of night and space. All my life but the feeble rustlings of a mouse in straw.
As I stripped off my miserable gewgaws I discovered myself talking into my solitude; weeping, beseeching, though eyes were dry and tongue silent. I scoured away the chalk and paint: and cleansed as far as possible my travel-stained clothes. From my bit of looking-glass a scared and shining face looked out. "Oh, my dear," I whispered, but not to its reflection, "it is as clean now and for ever as I can make it." I tied up my bundle.
It was impossible to cheat away the moments any longer. I sat down and listened. A distant roar of welcome, like that of a wave breaking over a wreck, had been borne across as the band broke into its welcoming tune. I saw the ring, its tall, lank-cheeked "master" in his white shirt and coat-tails, the lights, the sidling, squalling clown, and the slim, exquisite creature with its ungainly rider ambling on and on. Where sat Fanny amidst that rabble? What were her thoughts? Was Mrs Monnerie already yawning over the low, beggarly scene? A few minutes now. I began to count. A scream, human or animal, rose faint and awful in the distance, and died away.
I climbed down the ladder and looked out of the tent.Far-spread the fields and wooded hills lay, as if in a swoon beneath the blazing moonlight. The scattered lamps on the slope shone dim as glow-worms. Only a few figures loitered in the gleam of the side-shows, and so engrossed and still sat the watching multitude beneath the enormous mushroom of the tent, so thinly floated out its strains of music, that the hollow clucking of the stream over its pebbles beneath the wan-stoned bridge was audible. A few isolated stars glittered faintly in the heights of the sky. What was happening now? Why did he not hasten? I was ready: my life prepared. I could bear no more waiting. A whip cracked. The music ceased: silence. One moment now.
Again the whip cracked. And then, as if at a signal, a vast, protracted, unanimous bawl poured up into space, a spout of sound, like a gigantic, invisible flower. "That wasn't applause. But, you know, that wasn't applause," I heard myself muttering. There can be no mistaking the sound of human mockery. There can be no mistaking that brutal wrench at the heart, under one's very ribs. I leapt round where I stood, in a kind of giddiness.
The shout died away. An indiscriminate clamour broke out—clapping of hands, beating of feet, whistling, hootings, booings, catcalls, and these all but drowned by cymbal, drum, trombone: "Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye." It was over. Unlike Mrs Monnerie, the mob was imperfectly satisfied. But all was well. The elephant, massive, imperturbable—the sagacious elephant with the hurdy-gurdy, must now be swinging into the ring.
I ran out over the trampled grass to meet the approaching group—showman, gipsy, trembling, sweating pony. Its rider stooped forward on the saddle, clutching its pommel, as if afraid of falling. He pushed himself off, lurched unsteadily, lifted and let fall his arm in an attempt to stroke the milk-white snapping muzzle. The strings of his cloak were already broken. He edged from beneath it, and with his left hand clumsily brushed the dust and damp from his face.
"He hadn't quite the knack of it," the showman was explaining. "Stirrup a morsel too short, maybe. All the strength, lady, and the ginger, by God, but not the knack, you understand. And we offered him a quieter little animal too. But what I say is, a bargain's a bargain, that's what I say. A bit dazed-like, sir, eh? My, you did come a cropper."
"Sst! are you hurt?" I whispered.
The head shook; his moon-washed face smiled at me.
"Come now, comenow," I implored him, tugging at his arm, "before the crowd...."
He recoiled as if my touch had scalded him.
"We go——" I turned to the showman.
Hands thrust under his leathern belt, he looked fixedly at me, and then at the woman. Her eyes glittered glassily back at him.
"That's it. The young lady knows best. He's twisted his shoulder, lady; wrenched it; more weight than size, as you might say. She'll know where to make her friend comfortable. Trust the ladies. Never you be afraid of that. Now, then, Mary, fetch up the gentleman's cart."
The woman, with one wolfish glance into his face, obeyed.
"There, sir! Is that easier? Push the rags in there behind his back. It'll save the jolts. Lord love you, I wouldn't split on the pair of you, not me. I know the old, old story. There, that's it! Now, then, your ladyship. No more weight in the hand than a mushroom! All serene, Mary. Home sweet home; that's the tune, sir, ain't it? Drive easy now: and off we go."
Noiselessly turned the wheels in the grass. We were descending the hill. A jolt, and we were in the road. A hedgerow shut us out from the two shrouded watchers by the tent. The braying music fainted away; and apart from the trotting hoofs and the grinding of the wheels in the dust, the only sound I heard was an occasional lofty crackle in space, as a rocket—our last greeting from the circus—stooping on its fiery course, strewed its coloured stars into the moonlight. Then the rearing hill-side shut us out.
Speechlessly, from the floor of the cart, I watched the stooping figure above me. Ever and again, at any sudden lurch against a stone, he shrank down, then slowly lifted himself, turned his head and smiled.
"That's the tune, sir; that's the tune, sir." The words aimlessly repeated themselves in my brain, as if bringing me a message I could not grasp or understand. "What was I thinking about?" a voice kept asking me. A strange, sluggish look dwelt in the dilated pupils under the drooping lids when the moonbeams struck in on us from between the branches. His right hand hung loosely down. I clasped it—stone-cold.
"Listen, tell me," I entreated, "you fell? I heard them calling, and—and the clapping, what then?" I could speak no louder, but he seemed scarcely able to hear me.
"My shoulder," he answered thickly, as if the words came sluggishly and were half-strange to him. "I fell.... Nothing: nothing. Only that I love you."
The breath sighed itself away. I leaned my cheek against the unanswering hand, and chafed it with mine. Where now? Where now?
"We must keep awake," I called beguilingly into the slumbrous face, after a long silence, as if to a child. "Awake!"
A sigh, as he smiled in answer, shook him from head to foot.
"You are thirsty? What's this on your coat? Look, there is a gate. I'll creep through and get help." I scrambled up, endeavouring in vain to clutch at the reins.
But no; his head stirred its No; the left hand still held them fast. "Only ... wait."
Wasit "wait"—that last faint word? It fell into my mind like a leaf into a torrent, and before I could be sure of it, the sound was gone.
Instinct, neither his nor mine, guided us on through the winding lanes, up hill and down, along the margin of sleeping wood and light-dappled stream, over a level crossing whose dew-rusted rails gleamed in the moon, then up once more, the retreating hill-side hollowly echoing to every clap of hoof against stone. There was no strength or will left in me, only thoughts which in the dark within, between waking and sleeping, seemed like hovering flies to veer and dart—fantasies, fragments of dream, rather than thoughts.
I realized how sorely he was hurt, yet not then in my stupidity and horror—or is it that I refused to confess it to myself?—that his hurt was mortal. Morning would come soon. I grasped tight the hand in mine. Then help. In this monotony and weariness of mind and body, the passing trees seemed to dance and gesticulate before my eyes. A torturing drowsiness crept over me which in vain, thrusting up my eyelids with my fingers, beating my senseless feet on the floor of the cart, I tried to dispel. Once, I remember, I rose and threw my cape over his shoulder. At last I must have slept.
For the next thing I became conscious of was that the cart was at a standstill, and that the pony stood cropping the thyme-sweet turf by the wayside. I touched the cold dark hand. "Hush, my dear, we are here!"
But I expected no answer. The head was sunken between the heavy shoulders; the pallid features were set in an empty stare. There wasn't a sound in the whole world, far or near. "Oh, but you haven't said a single word to me!" It was the only speech in my mind—a reproach. It died on my lips; I drew away. What was this?—a dreadful fear plucked at my sleeve, fear of the company I was in, of a solitude never so much as tasted before. I leapt out of the cart, stood up in the dust, and in the creeping light stared about me.
Every window of the creeper-hung cottage was shrouded, its gate latched. I struggled to climb the fence, to fling a stone through the casement. The moon shone glassily in the cold skies, but daybreak was in the east; I must wait till morning. With eyes fixed on the motionless head I sat down in the grass by the wayside. Ever and again, after solemnly turning to survey me, the pony dragged the cart on a foot or two under the willows, nibbling the dewy grass.
Roused suddenly from stupor by the howling of a dog, I leapt up. Who called? Where was I? What had I forgotten? In renewed and dreadful recognition I looked vacantly around me. A strangeness had come. His company was mine no longer.
Dawn brightened. The voice of a thrush pealed out of the orchard beyond the stone wall—wild and sweet as in Spring. I crouched on the ground, elbows on knees, and now kept steady watch upon those night-hung upper windows. At last a curtain was drawn aside. An invisible face within must have looked down upon us in the lane. The casement was unlatched and thrust open, and a grey, tousled head pushed out as if in alarm into the keen morning. At sight of it a violent hiccoughing seized me, so that when an old woman appeared at her door and hobbled out to the cart, I could not make myself understood. Her sleep-bleared, faded eyes surveyed me with horror and suspicion—as if in my smallness there I looked scarcely human. She shook her crooked fingers at me, to scare me off; then stooping, put her head into the cart. I cried out, and ran——
The sun had burned for some hours in the heavens, when bleeding with thorns and on fire with nettles and stinking mayweed, I dragged myself out of the undergrowth into a low-lying corner of the desolate garden. Near by lay a pool of water under an old ruinous wall, swept by the foliage of an ash. On a flat, shelving stone at its brink I knelt down, bathed my face, and drank.
All that day I spent in the neighbourhood of the water, overhung with the colourless trumpets of convolvulus. Occasionally I edged on, but only to keep pace with the sunbeams, for I was deathly cold, and as soon as shadow drew over me, fits of shivering returned. For some hours I slept, but so shallowly that I heard my own voice gabbling in dreams.
When I awoke, the western sky was an ocean of saffron and gold. Amidst its haze, stood up the distant clustered chimneys of Wanderslore: and I realized I must be in an outlying hollow of the park—farthest from Beechwood Hill. I sat up, bound back my hair, and, bathing my swollen feet in the dark, ice-cold water, I watched the splendour fade.
While there was still light in the sky I set out for the cottage again, but soon found myself in such distress amongst the tangled weeds and grasses, which at every movement flung their stifling dust and seeds and pollen over me, that I was compelled to give up the attempt. With senseless tears dropping down my cheeks, I returned to the pool, and made my bed in the withered bracken.
So passed the next days. When once more the cloudless heat of the sun had diminished, I made another attempt to press back by the way I had come, if only to look up at those windows again. But I was dazed and exhausted; lost my way; and, keeping watch until daybreak, I returned again to the pool. Sitting there, I tried to control my misery and be calm. "Wait, wait; I am coming,"was my one inarticulate thought. Surely that other solitude must be the easier to bear. But it was in vain. He was dead; and I had killed him—pride, vanity, greed, obstinacy, lovelessness. Every flower and fading leaf bore witness against me.
Now and again I quenched my thirst and rambled off a little way in search of a few fallen hazel nuts and blackberries, and attempted to ease the pain and distress I was in. But I knew in my heart that a few such days must see the last of me, and I had no other desire. Evening came with its faint stars. My mind at last seemed to empty itself of thought; and until dark fell, a self sat at the windows of my eyes gazing heedlessly out over that peace and beauty without consciousness even of grief and despair. Nocturnal creatures began to stir in weed and thicket; a thin mist to rise. For a while I kept watch until sense left me, and I slept.
A waning misshapen moon hung over the garden when I awoke, my mind still, clear, empty. So empty that I might but just have re-entered the world after the lapse of ages. In this silvery hush of night, winged shapes were wheeling around and above me, piercing the air with mad, strident cries. With sight strangely sharpened and powerful, I gazed tranquilly up, and supposed for a while these birds were swallows. Idly I watched them, scarcely conscious whether they were real or creatures of the imagination.
Darting, swooping in the mild blaze of the moonlight, with gaping beaks and whirring wings, they swept, wavered, tumbled above their motionless pastures; ghostly-fluttering, feathery-plumed moths their prey. At last, a continuous churring, like the noise of a rattle, near at hand, betrayed them. I lay in my solitude in the midst of a whirling flock of nightjars, few in number, but beside themselves with joy, on the eve of their autumnal flight.
I can only grope my way now through vague and baffling memories. Maybe it was the frenzied excitement of these madly happy birds that shed itself into my defenceless mind, after rousing me into the night I knew too well. With full, vigilant eyes I am standing again a few paces from the brink of the pool, looking up into a moonlit bush of deadly nightshade, its noxious flowering over, and hung with its black, gleaming, cherry-like fruit. I cannot recall having ever given a thought to this poisonous plant inWanderslore during my waking hours, though in my old happy reconnoitrings of the garden I had sometimes chanced on the coral-red clusters of the woody nightshade—the bittersweet, and had afterwards seen it in blossom.
It may be that only a part of my mind was fully awake, while the rest dreamed on. Yet, as I strive to return in imagination to that solitary hour, I am certain that a complete realization was mine of the power distilled into those alluring light-glossed berries; and, slave of my drowsy senses, I fixed gaze and appetite on them as though, from childhood up, they had been my one greed and desire. Even then, as if for proof that they were real, my eyes wandered; recognized, low in the west, glaring Altair amid the faint outspread wings of Aquila; pondered on the spark-like radiance struck out by the moonbeams from the fragments of tile that protruded here and there from the crumbling wall beyond the pool; and softly returned once more to the evil bush.
Then, for an instant, I fancied that out of the nearer shadows a half-seen form had stolen up close behind me, and was watching me. Fancy or not, it caused me no fear. I turned about where I stood, and from this gentle eminence scanned the immense autumnal garden with its coursing night-birds and distant motionless woods. No; I was alone; by my Self; conscious only of an unfathomable quiet; and I stooped and took up one of the ripe fruits that had fallen to the ground. "Ah, ah!" called a far-away voice within me. "Ah, ah! What are you at now?"—a voice like none I had ever heard in the world until that moment. Yet I raised the fruit to my lips.
Its bitter juices jetted out upon cheek, mouth, and tongue, for ever staining me with their dye. Their very rancour shocked my body wide awake. Struck suddenly through with frightful cold and terror, I flung the vile thing down, and scoured my mouth with the draggled hem of my skirt. "Oh God! oh God!" I cried; then turned, ran a few steps, tripped, turned back and cast myself down, crushing my eyes with my hands; and in helpless confusion began to pray.
Minutes, hours, passed—I know not. But at last, with throat parched and swollen, and hands and cheeks and scalp throbbing with an unnatural heat, I raised my eyes. Two moons were in the sky, hideously revolving amid interwoven arcs of colouredlight, and running backward and forward. I called out in the silence. A gigantic nightjar swirled on me, plucking at my hair. A maddening vertigo seized me. I went stumbling and staggering down to my stone and drenched head and breast in the flashing black and silver water.
It was a momentary refreshment, and in its influence memory began droning of the past. Confused abhorrent images mocked my helpless dreamings. There was a place—beyond—out of these shadows, unattainable. A piercing, vindictive voice was calling me. No hope now. I was damned. In senseless hallucination I began systematically, laboriously, a frenzied search. Leaf, pebble, crawling night-creature—with slow, animal-like care, I turned them over one by one, seeking and seeking.
And yet again I pause—long after these last words were written—to look back across the intervening years at that young woman. What, indeed, was her insane mind seeking: what assurance, reconciliation? I know not, but there she herself was found, nails worn to the quick, feet shoeless, a hunted anatomy. Her fret and fever were to pass away; but what has all this experience done for me?—that wildest, happiest, cruellest, dearest, blackest twelve-month of my life? One more unanswerable question. But, thank God, I live on; have even finished the task I set myself; and in spite of fits and moods of depression, distaste, and weariness, have been happy in it. Even when most contemptuous and ashamed of myself, I have still found comfort in the belief that truth is a wholesome medicine, though in essence it be humanly unattainable. And my work has taught me this too—not to fret so foolishly as once I did, at being small and insignificant in body; to fear a great deal more remaining pygmy-minded, and pygmy-spirited. I used to try to set myself against the World—but no need to enter further into that. Wecannotsee ourselves as others see us, but that is no excuse for not wearing spectacles; and even up here, in my peaceful lonely old Stonecote, I must beware of a mind swept and garnished. Moreover my hour must come again: and his.
That being so, of this I am certain; that it will be impossible to free myself, to escape from this world, unless in peace and amity I can take every shred of it, every friend and every enemy, all that these eyes have seen, these senses discovered with me. Iknowthat. And perhaps for that very reason, in spite of the loving gratitude that overcomes me at the thought of what my existence might have been, I sometimes dread the ease and quiet and seclusion in which I live. And this tale itself? As Mrs Monnerie had said, what is it but once more to have drifted into being on show again—in a book? That is so; and so I mustleave it, hoping against hope that one friend at any rate will consent in his love and wisdom to take me seriously, and to remember me, not with scorn or even with pity, but as if, life for life, we had shared the world on equal terms.
M.