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 in _that_ looking-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 of applause 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 could make
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 so monstrous 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. _She_
wasn'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 I _see_? 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 the _wallowing_, I shall
remember that."
"But, my dear, my dear," he began, "I never--"
"I say I am _not_ your dear," I broke in furiously. "One moment you
dictate to me as if I were a child, and the next---- As if I hadn'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 life _I've_ led. And as for the vile mob and the rest of it, I tell
you I've enjoyed every minute of them. I _make_ them clap their great
ugly hands: I _make_ them 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. _They_ don't wince at
my company; _they_ don'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...."
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? There was 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 my _Pilgrim'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 small and 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, _seeing_ us, 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 of heaven 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 all _he_ cared 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 seance.
A few hasty minutes, and, stealing out, I bade Mr Anon look. All
Angelique's fair hair had been tied into a bob and draped
mantilla-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 dais 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.