Next day, after a long lying-in-wait, I intercepted Adam Waggett and
beckoned him into the shrubbery. First I questioned him. A bill of the
circus, he told me, had already been left at the lodge. Its tents and
booths and Aunt Sallies were even now being pitched in a meadow three or
four miles distant and this side the neighbouring town. So far, so good.
I told him my plan. He could do nothing but look at me like a fish, with
his little black eyes, as I sat on a tree stump and marshalled my
instructions.
But my first crucial battle had been fought with Adam Waggett in the
garden at Lyndsey. He had neither the courage nor even the cowardice to
gainsay me. After a tedious siege of his sluggish wits, greed for the
reward I promised him, the assurance that if we were discovered the
guilt should rest on me, and maybe some soupcon of old sake's sake won
him over. The branches of the trees swayed and creaked above us in the
sunshine; and at last, looking down on me with a wry face, Adam promised
to do my bidding.
Six had but just struck that evening when there came the rap of his
knuckles on my bedroom door. He found me impatiently striding up and
down in a scintillating bodice and skirts of scarlet, lemon, and
silver--as gay and gaudy an object as the waxen Russian Princess I had
seen in one of Mrs Monnerie's cabinets. My flaxen hair was plaited
German-wise, and tied in two thumping pigtails with a green ribbon; I
stood and looked at him. He fumblingly folded his hands in front of him
as he stood and looked back at me. I was quivering like a flame in a
lamp. And never have I been so much flattered as by the silly, stupefied
stare on his face.
How I was to be carried to the circus had been one of our most difficult
problems. This cunning creature had routed out from some lumber-room in
the old house a capacious old cage--now rusty, but stout and solidly
made--that must once have housed the aged Chakka.
"There, miss," he whispered triumphantly; "that's the ticket, and right
to a hinch."
I confess I winced at his "ticket." But Adam had cushioned and padded it
for me, and had hooded it over with a stout piece of sacking, leaving
the ring free. Apart from our furtive preparations, evening quiet
pervaded the house. The maids were out sweethearting, he explained. Mrs
French had retired as usual to her own sitting-room; Fortune seemed to
be smiling upon me.
"Then, Adam," I whispered, "the time has come. Jerk me as little as
possible; and if questions are asked, you are taking the cage to be
mended, you understand? And when we get there, see no one but the man or
the woman who spoke to you at the gates."
"Well, miss, it's a rum go," said Adam, eyeing me with a grotesque
grimace of anxiety.
I looked up at him from the floor of the cage. "The rummer the go is,
Adam, the quicker we ought to be about it."
He lowered the wiry dome over my head; I bunched in my skirts; and with
the twist of a few hooks I was secure. The faint squeak of his boots
told me that he had stolen to the door to listen.
"All serene," he whispered hoarsely through the sacking. I felt myself
lifted up and up. We were on our way. Then, like flies, a cloud of
misgivings settled upon my mind. As best I could I drove them away, and
to give myself confidence began to count. A shrill false whistling broke
the silence. Adam was approaching the lodge; a mocking screech of its
gates, and we were through. After that, apart from the occasional beat
of hoofs or shoes, a country "good-night," or a husky cough of
encouragement from Adam, I heard nothing more. The gloom deepened. The
heat was oppressive; I became a little seasick, and pressing my mouth to
a small slit between the bars, sucked in what fresh air I could.
Midway on our journey Adam climbed over a stile to rest a while, and,
pushing back a corner of the sacking, he asked me how I did.
"Fine, Adam," said I, panting. "We are getting along famously."
The fields were sweet and dusky. It was a clear evening, and
refreshingly cool.
"You may smoke a pipe, Adam, if you wish," I called softly. And while he
puffed, and I listened to the chirping of a cricket, he told me of a
young housemaid that was always chaffing and ridiculing him at No. 2.
"It may be that she has taken a passing fancy to you," said I, looking
up into the silent oak tree under which we were sitting. "On the other
hand, you may deserve it. What is she like, Adam?"
"Black eyebrows," said Adam. "Shows her teeth when she laughs. But
that's no reason why she should make a fool of a fellow."
"The real question is, is she a nice modest girl?" said I, and my
bangles jangled as I raised my hand to my hair. "Come, Adam, there's no
time to waste; are you ready?"
He grunted, his mind still far away. "She's a fair sneak," he said,
rapping his pipe-bowl on a stone. And so, up and on.
Time seemed to have ceased to be, in this jolting monotony, unbroken
except by an occasional giddying swing of my universe as Adam
transferred the cage from hand to hand. Swelteringly hot without, but a
little cold within, I was startled by a far-away blare of music. I
clutched tight the slender bars; the music ceased, and out of the quiet
that followed rose the moaning roar of a wild beast.
My tongue pressed itself against my teeth; the sacking trembled, and a
faint luminousness began to creep through its hempen strands. Shouting
and screaming, catcalls and laughter swelled near. And now by the medley
of smells and voices, and the glint of naked lights floating in on me, I
realized that we had reached our goal.
Adam came to a standstill. "Where's the boss?" The tones were thick and
muffled. A feeble smile swept over my face: I discovered I was holding
my breath.
A few paces now, the din distanced a little and the glare diminished.
Then sounded another voice hoarse and violent, high above my head.
The cage bumped to the ground. And I heard Adam cringingly explain:
"I've got a bird here for you, mister."
"A bird," rang the jeer, "who wants your bloody bird? Be off."
"Ay, but it won't be a bloody bird," gasped Adam cajolingly, "when
you've seen her pretty feathers."
At this, apparently, recollection of Adam's face or voice returned to
the showman. He remained silent while with palsied fingers Adam
unlatched my bolts and bars. Bent almost double and half-stifled, I sat
there in sight, my clothes spread brightly out about me. The cool air
swirled in, and for a while my eyes dazzled at the bubbling blaze of a
naphtha lamp suspended from the pole of the tent above the criss-cross
green-bladed grass at my feet. I lifted my head.
There stood Adam, in his black tail-coat rubbing his arm; and there the
showman. Still to the tips of my fingers, I sat motionless, gazing up
into the hard, high-boned, narrow-browed face with its small restless
eyes voraciously taking me in. Fortunately the choked beating of my
heart was too small a sound for his ear; and he was the first to
withdraw from the encounter.
"My God," he muttered, and spat into a corner of the canvas booth--with
its one dripping lamp, its rough table and chair, and a few oddments of
his trade.
"And what, my handsome young lady," he went on in a low, carneying tone,
and fidgeting with his hands, "what might be your little imbroglio?"
In a gush, presence of mind returned to me, and fear passed away. I
quietly listened to myself explaining without any concealment precisely
what was my little imbroglio. He burst out laughing.
"Stage-struck, eh? There's a young lady now! Well, who's to blame 'ee?"
He asked me my age, my name, where I came from, if I could dance, sing,
ride; and stared so roundly at me that I seemed to see my garish colours
reflected in the metallic grey of his eyes.
All this was on his side of the bargain. Now came mine. I folded tight
my hands in my lap, glanced up at the flaming lamp. How much would he
pay me?
It was as if a shutter had descended over his face. "Drat me," said he,
"when a young lady comes selling anything, she _asks_ her price."
So I asked mine--fifteen guineas for four nights' hire.... To look at
that human animal you might have supposed the actual guineas had lodged
in his throat. It may be that Shylock's was a more modest bargain. I
cannot say.
At first thought it had seemed to me a monstrous sum, but at that time I
was ignorant of what a really fine midget fetched. It was but half my
old quarterly allowance, with L2 over for Adam. I should need every
penny of it. And I had not come selling my soul without having first
decided on its value. The showman fumed and blustered. But I sat close
on Chakka's abandoned stage, perfectly still, making no answer; finding,
moreover, in Adam an unexpected stronghold, for the wider gawked his
frightened eyes at the showman's noise and gesticulations, the more
resolved I became. With a last dreadful oath, the showman all but kicked
a hole in my cage.
"Take me away, Adam," I cried quaveringly; "we are wasting this
gentleman's time."
I smiled to myself, in spite of the cold tremors that were shaking me
all over; with every nerve and sinew of his corpulent body he was
coveting me: and with a curse he at last accepted my terms. I shrugged
my shoulders, but still refused to stir a finger until our contract had
been written down in black and white. Maybe some tiny love-bird of
courage roosts beneath every human skull, maybe my mother's fine French
blood had rilled to the surface. However that may be, there could be no
turning back.
He drew out a stump of pencil and a dirty envelope. "That, my fine
cock," he said to Adam, as he wrote, "that's a woman; and you make no
mistake about it. To hell with your fine ladies."
It remains, if not the most delicate, certainly one of the most
substantial compliments I ever earned in my life.
"That's that," he pretended to groan, presenting me with his scrawl.
"Ask a shark for a stamp, and if ruined I must be--ruined I am."
I leapt to my feet, shook out my tumbled finery, smiled into his
stooping face, and tucked the contract into my bodice. "Thank you,
sir," I said, "and I promise you shan't be ruined if _I_ can help it."
Whereupon Adam became exceedingly merry, the danger now over.
Such are the facts concerning this little transaction, so far as I can
recall them; yet I confess to being a little incredulous. Have I,
perhaps, gilded my side of the bargaining? If so, I am sure my showman
would be the last person to quarrel with me. I am inclined to think he
had taken a fancy to me. Anyhow I had won--what is, perhaps, even
better--his respect. And though the pay came late, when it was no longer
needed, and though it was the blackest money that ever touched my
fingers, it came. And if anybody was the defaulter, it was I.
There was no time to lose. My gipsy woman was sent for from the shooting
gallery. I shook hands with her; she shook hands with Adam, who was then
told to go about his business and to return to the tent when the circus
was over. The three of us, showman, woman, and I, conferred together,
and with extreme cordiality agreed what should be my little part in the
performance. The booth in which we had made our bargain was hastily
prepared for my "reception." Its table was to be my dais. A loose flap
of canvas was hung to one side of it to screen me off from prying eyes
when I was not on show. My only dangerous rival, it appeared, was the
Spotted Boy.
There followed a deafening pealing of panpipes, drumming of drum, and
yelling of voices. In that monstrous din I was past thinking, just
_being_; and I bridled to myself like a schoolgirl caught in a delicious
naughtiness, to hear the fine things--the charms and marvels--which my
showman was bawling about me. Then one by one, at first a little
owlishly, the Great Public, at the charge of 6d. per adult and half
price for children (or "full-growns under 3 foot") were admitted to the
presence of the "_Signorina Donna Angelique, the Fairy Princess of
Andalusia in Spain_." So at any rate declares the printed handbill.
In the attitude of Madame Recamier in the picture, I reclined on a
lustrous spread of crimson satin and rabbit-skin draped over a small
lump of wood for bolster to give support to my elbow. And out of my
paint and powder, from amid this oasis--and with repeated warnings "not
to touch" screamed by my gipsy--I met as pleasantly and steadily as I
could the eyes of the grinning, smirking, awestruck faces--townsfolk and
village folk, all agape and all sound Kentish stock.
"That isn't real, she's a doll," lisped a crepe-bonneted little girl who
with skimpy legs dangling out of her petticoat had been hoisted up under
her armpits for a clearer view. I let a little pause come, then turned
my head on my hand and smiled, leaned over and eased my tinselled
slipper. An audible sigh, sweet as incense, went up under the hollow of
the booth. I looked on softly from face to face--another dream. Some
captive beast mewed and brushed against the sides of a cage drawn up a
yard or two from where I lay. The lamp poured flame and smoke. The
canvas quietly flapped, and was still. Wild ramped the merry-go-round
with its bells and hootings; and the panpipes sobbed their liquid decoy.
The Signorina's first reception was over.
News of her spread like wildfire. I could hear the showman bellowing at
the press of people. His guineas were fructifying. And a peculiar
rapturous gravity spread over me. When one's very self is wrapt in the
ordeal of the passing moment, is lost like that, out of time and space,
it seems, well--another presence had stolen into my mind, had taken
possession. I cannot explain. But in this, it may be, all men _are_
equal, whatever their lot. So, I suppose, a flower breaks out of the
bud, and butterflies put off the mask of the chrysalis, and rainbows
mount the skies. But I must try not to rhapsodize. All I know is that
even in that low self-surrender, some tiny spark of life in me could not
be content to let my body remain a mere mute stock for the ignorant
wonder of those curious eyes.
The actual impulse, however, came from a young woman who, when next the
people had streamed in, chanced to be standing close beside me. She was
a weak-looking thing, yet reminded me in a sorrowful fashion of Fanny.
Caught back by her melancholy, empty eyes, I seemed to lose myself in
their darkness; to realize that she, too, was in trouble. I craned up
from my wooden bolster and whispered in her hair: "Patience, patience.
There shall be a happy issue, my dear, out of all your afflictions."
Only she herself and a weedy, sallow young man in her company could
have heard these words. A glint of fright and desperation sprang into
her large-pupilled eyes. But I smiled, and we exchanged kindness. She
moistened her lips, turned from me, and clutching at the young man's
arm, edged her way out of the throng and vanished.
"And what sort be this un?" roared an ox-faced, red-haired man from the
back. "This un" hung on his shoulder, tiptoe, fair, young, and blowsy.
"She'll _coin_ you money," I cried pleasantly, "and spend it. The hand
that rocks the cradle rules the world."
"And him, and him? the toad!" cried the girl half-angrily at the shout
of merriment that had shaken the tent.
"Why, pretty maid," piped I, "the nearer the wine the sweeter the cork;
the plumper the pig the fatter the pork." The yell that followed was a
better advertisement than drum or panpipes. The showman had discovered
an oracle! For the next half-hour my booth was a mass of
"Sixpennies"--the squirming Threepennies were told to wait. It filled
and emptied again and again like a black bottle in the Dog Days. And
when the spirit moved me, I singled out a tell-tale face and told its
fortune--not less shrewdly on the whole, I think, than Mrs Ballard's
_Book of Fate_.
But it was a strangely exhausting experience. I was inexpressibly
relieved when it was over; when the tent-flap descended for the last
time, and I could rest from my labours, puffed up, no doubt, with far
too rich a conceit of myself, but immeasurably grateful and happy.
Comparative quiet descended on the meadows. From a neighbouring tent
broke shattering bursts of music, clapping and thumping, the fretful
growling of the beasts, the elephant's trumpeting, the firing of guns,
whoops, caterwauling, and the jangling of harness. The Grand Circus was
in progress, and fantasy made a picture for me of every sound.
Presently my showman reappeared, leading in a pacing, smooth-skinned,
cinnamon-and-milk-dappled pony, bridled and saddled with silver and
scarlet, his silky mane daintily plaited, his tail a sweeping plume. He
stood, I should guess, about half a hand higher than my childhood's
Mopsa--the prettiest pygmy creature, though obviously morose and
unsettled in temper. I took a good long look at his pink Albino eye. But
a knack once acquired is quickly recovered. I mounted him. The stirrup
was adjusted, one of my German plaits was dandled over my shoulder, and
after a leisurely turn or two in the open, I nodded that the highborn
Angelique was ready.
The showman, leering avariciously at me out of his shifty eyes, led us
on towards the huge ballooning tent, its pennon fluttering darkly
against the stars. I believe if in that spirituous moment he had
muttered, "Fly with me, fairest!" all cares forgotten, I'd have been
gone. He held his peace.
The brass band within wrenched and blared into the tune of "The Girl I
Left behind Me." Chafing, pawing, snorting, my steed, with its rider,
paused in the entry. Then with a last smirk of encouragement from the
gipsy woman, the rein was loosed, I bowed my head, and the next moment,
as if in a floating vat of light, I found myself cantering wellnigh
soundlessly round the ring, its circumference thronged tier above tier
in the smoke-laden air with ghost-white rings of faces.
I smiled fixedly, tossing my fingers. A piebald clown came wambling in
to meet me, struck his hand on his foolish heart, and fell flat in the
tan. Love at first sight. Over his prostrate body we ambled, the
ill-tempered little beast naggling at its bit, and doing his utmost to
unseat me. The music ceased. The cloud of witnesses loured. Come Night,
come Nero, I didn't care! Edging the furious little creature into the
centre of the ring, I mastered him, wheeled him, in a series of
obeisances--North, South, East, West. A hurricane--such as even Mr
Bowater can never have outridden--a hurricane of applause burst bounds
and all but swept me out of the saddle. "Good-bye, Sweetheart,
Good-bye!" sang cornet and trombone. With a toss, I swept my plaits
starwards, brandished my whip at the faces, and galloped out into the
night.
My _debut_ was over. I confess it--the very memory of it carries me away
even now. And even now I would maintain that it was at least a little
more successful than that other less professional _debut_ which poor Mr
Crimble and Lady Pollacke had left unacclaimed in Beechwood High Street.