Memoirs of a Midget Part 18

"Oh, dear me, miss," the poor thing cried brokenly, "how should your young mind feel what an old woman feels: just grovelling in the past?"

She was gone; and, feeling very uncomfortable in my humiliation, I sat down and stared--at "the workbox." Why, why indeed, I thought angrily, why should I be responsible? Well, I suppose it's only when the poor fish--sturgeon or stickleback--struggles, that he really knows he's in the net.

Chapter Nineteen

One of the many perplexing problems that now hemmed me in was brushed away by Fortune that afternoon. Between gloomy bursts of reflection on f.a.n.n.y's, Mr Crimble's, Mrs Bowater's, and my own account, I had been reading Miss Austen; and at about four o'clock was sharing Chapter XXIII. with poor Elinor:--

"The youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind her to everything but her beauty and good nature, but the four succeeding years--years which, if rationally spent, give such improvements to the understanding--must have opened her eyes to her defects of Education, which the same period of time, spent on her side in inferior society and more frivolous pursuits...."

I say I was reading this pa.s.sage, and had come to the words--"and more frivolous pursuits," when an unusually imperative _rat-tat-tat_ fell upon the outer door, and I emerged from my book to discover that an impressive white-horsed barouche was drawn up in the street beyond my window. The horse tossed its head and chawed its frothy bit; and the coachman sat up beside his whip in the sparkling frosty afternoon air.

My heart gave a thump, and I was still seeking vaguely to connect this event with myself or with Mr Bowater in Buenos Ayres, when the door opened and a lady entered whose plumed and purple bonnet was as much too small for her head as she herself was too large for the room. Yet in sheer dimensions this was not a very large lady. It was her "presence"

that augmented her.

She seemed, too, to be perfectly accustomed to these special proportions, and with a rather haughty, "Thank you," to Mrs Bowater, winningly announced that she was Lady Pollacke, "a friend, a mutual friend, as I understand, of dear Mr Crimble's."

Though a mauvish pink in complexion, Lady Pollacke was so like her own white horse that _whinnyingly_ rather than _winningly_ would perhaps have been the apter word. I have read somewhere that this human resemblance to horses sometimes accompanies unusual intelligence. The poet, William Wordsworth, was like a horse; I have seen his portrait.

And I should like to see Dean Swift's. Whether or not, the unexpected arrival of this visitor betrayed me into some little gaucherie, and for a moment I still sat on, as she had discovered me, literally "floored"

by my novel. Then I scrambled with what dignity I could to my feet, and chased after my manners.

"And not merely that," continued my visitor, seating herself on a horsehair easy-chair, "but among my still older friends is Mr Pellew. So you see--you see," she repeated, apparently a little dazzled by the light of my window, "that we need no introduction, and that I know all--all the circ.u.mstances." She lowered a plump, white-kidded hand to her lap, as if, providentially, _there_ all the circ.u.mstances lay.

Unlike Mr Crimble, Lady Pollacke had not come to make excuses, but to bring me an invitation--nothing less than to take tea with her on the following Thursday afternoon. But first she hoped--she was sure, in fact, and she satisfied herself with a candid gaze round my apartment--that I was comfortable with Mrs Bowater; "a thoroughly trustworthy and sagacious woman, though, perhaps, a little eccentric in address."

I a.s.sured her that I was so comfortable that some of my happiest hours were spent gossiping with my landlady over my supper.

"Ah, yes," she said, "that cla.s.s of person tells us such very interesting things occasionally, do they not? Yet I am convinced that the crying need in these days is for discrimination. Uplift, by all means, but we mustn't confuse. What does the old proverb say: _Festina lente_: there's still truth in that. Now, had I known your father--but there; we must not rake in old ashes. We are clean, I see; and quiet and secluded."

Her equine glance made a rapid circuit of the photographs and ornaments that diversified the walls, and I simply couldn't help thinking what a queer little cage they adorned for so large and handsome a bird, the kind of bird, as one might say, that is less weight than magnitude.

I was still casting my eye up and down her silk and laces when she abruptly turned upon me with a direct question: "You seldom, I suppose, go _out_?"

Possibly if Lady Pollacke had not at this so composedly turned her full face on me--with its exceedingly handsome nose--her bonnet might have remained only vaguely familiar. Now as I looked at her, it was as if the full moon had risen. She was, without the least doubt in the world, the lady who had bowed to Mr Crimble from her carriage that fateful afternoon. A little countenance is not, perhaps, so tell-tale as a large one. (I remember, at any rate, the horrid shock I once experienced when my father set me up on his hand one day to show me my own face, many times magnified, in his dressing-room shaving-gla.s.s.) But my eyes must have narrowed a little, for Lady Pollacke's at once seemed to set a little harder. And she was still awaiting an answer to her question.

"'Go out'!" I repeated meditatively, "not very much, Lady Pollacke; at least not in crowded places. The boys, you know."

"Ah, yes, the boys." It was Mr Crimble's little dilemma all over again: Lady Pollacke was evidently wondering whether I knew she knew I knew.

"But still," I continued cheerfully, "it is the looker-on that sees most of the game, isn't it?"

Her eyelids descended, though her face was still lifted up. "Well, so the proverb says," she agreed, with the utmost cordiality. It was at this moment--as I have said--that she invited me to tea.

She would come for me herself, she promised. "Now wouldn't that be very nice for us both--quite a little adventure?"

I was not perfectly certain of the niceness, but might not Mr Crimble be a fellow-guest; and hadn't I an urgent and anxious mission with him? I smiled and murmured; and, as if her life had been a series of such little social triumphs, my visitor immediately rose; and, I must confess, in so doing seemed rather a waste of s.p.a.ce.

"Then _that's_ settled: Thursday afternoon. We must wrap up," she called gaily through her descending veil. "This treacherous month! It has come in like a lamb, but"--and she tugged at her gloves, still scrutinizing me fixedly beneath her eyelids, "but it will probably go out like a lion." As if to ill.u.s.trate this prediction, she swept away to the door, leaving Mrs Bowater's little parlour and myself to gather our scattered wits together as best we could, while her carriage rolled away.

Alas, though I love talking and watching and exploring, how could I be, even at that age, a really social creature? Though Lady Pollacke had been politeness itself, the remembrance of her bonnet in less favourable surroundings was still in my mind's eye. If anything, then, her invitation slightly depressed me. Besides, Thursday never was a favourite day of mine. It is said to have only one lucky hour--the last before dawn. But this is not tea-time. Worse still, the coming Thursday seemed to have sucked all the virtue out of the Wednesday in between. I prefer to see the future stretching out boundless and empty in front of me--like the savannas of Robinson Crusoe's island. Visitors, and I am quite sure _he_ would have agreed with me, are hardly at times to be distinguished from visitations.

All this merely means that I was a rather green and backward young woman, and, far worse, unashamed of being so. Here was one of the greatest ladies of Beechwood lavishing attentions upon me, and all I was thinking was how splendid an appearance she would have made a few days before if she had borrowed his whip from her coachman and dispersed my little mob with it, as had Mrs Stocks with her duster. But _n.o.blesse oblige_; Mr Crimble had been compelled to consider my feelings, and no doubt Lady Pollacke had been compelled to consider his.

The next day was fine, but I overslept myself and was robbed of my morning walk. For many hours I was alone. Mrs Bowater had departed on one of her shopping bouts. So, whoever knocked, knocked in vain; and I listened to such efforts in secret and unmannerly amus.e.m.e.nt. I wonder if ever ghosts come knocking like that on the doors of the mind; and it isn't that one won't hear, but can't. My afternoon was spent in an anxious examination of my wardrobe. Four o'clock punctually arrived, and, almost as punctually, Lady Pollacke. Soon, under Mrs Bowater's contemplative gaze, I was mounted up on a pile of cushions, and we were bowling along in most inspiriting fashion through the fresh March air.

Strangely enough, when during our progress, eyes were now bent in my direction, Lady Pollacke seemed copiously to enjoy their interest. This was especially the case when she was acquainted with their owners; and bowed her bow in return.

"Quite a little reception for you," she beamed at me, after a particularly respectable carriage had cast its occupants' scarcely modulated glances in my direction. How strange is human character! To an intelligent onlooker, my other little reception must have been infinitely more inspiring; and yet she had almost wantonly refused to take any part in it. Now, supposing I _had_ been Royalty or a corpse run over in the street.... But we were come to our journey's end.

Brunswick House was a fine, square, stone-edged edifice, dominating its own "grounds." Regiments of crocuses stood with mouths wide open in its rich loam. Its gateposts were surmounted by white b.a.l.l.s of stone; and the gravel was of so lively a colour that it must have been new laid.

Wherever I looked, my eyes were impressed by the best things in the best order. This was as true of Lady Pollacke's clothes, as of her features, of her gateposts, and her drawing-room. And the next most important thing in the last was its light.

Light simply _poured_ in upon its gilt and bra.s.s and pale maroon from two high wide windows staring each other down from between their rich silk damask curtains. It was like entering an enormous bath, and it made me timid. In the midst of a large animal's skin, beneath a fine white marble chimney-piece, and under an ormolu clock, the parlour-maid was directed to place a cherry-coloured stool for me. Here I seated myself.

With a fine, encouraging smile my hostess left me for a few minutes to myself. Maybe because an embroidered fire-screen that stood near reminded me of Miss Fenne, I pulled myself together. "Don't be a ninny,"

I heard myself murmur. My one hope and desire in this luxurious solitude was for the opportunity to deliver my message to Mr Crimble. This was not only a visit, it was an adventure. I looked about the flashing room; and it rather stared back at me.

The first visitor to appear was none but Miss Bullace, whose recitation of "The Lady's 'Yes'" had so peculiarly inspirited f.a.n.n.y. She sat square and dark with her broad lap in front of her, and scrutinized me as if _no_ emergency ever daunted her. And Lady Pollacke recounted the complexity of ties that had brought us together. Miss Bullace, alas, knew neither Mr Ambrose Pellew, nor my G.o.dmother, nor even my G.o.dmother's sister, Augusta Fenne. Indeed I seemed to have no claim at all on her recognition until she inquired whether it was not Augusta Fenne's cousin, Dr Julius Fenne, who had died suddenly while on a visit to the Bermudas. Apparently it was. We all at once fell into better spirits, which were still more refreshed when Lady Pollacke remarked that Augusta had also "gone off like that," and that Fennes were a doomed family.

But merely to smile and smile is not to partake; so I ventured to suggest that to judge from my last letter from my G.o.dmother she, at any rate, was in her usual health; and I added, rather more cheerfully perhaps than the fact warranted, that my family seemed to be doomed too, since, so far as I was aware, I myself was the last of it left alive.

At this a sudden gush of shame welled up in me at the thought that through all my troubles I had never once remembered the kindnesses of my step-grandfather; that he, too, might be dead. I was so rapt away by the thought that I caught only the last three words of Miss Bullace's murmured aside to Lady Pollacke, _viz._, "not blush unseen."

Lady Pollacke raised her eyebrows and nodded vigorously; and then to my joy Mr Crimble and a venerable old lady with silver curls cl.u.s.tering out of her bonnet were shown into the room. He looked pale and absent as he bent himself down to take my hand. It was almost as if in secret collusion we had breathed the word f.a.n.n.y together. Mrs Crimble was supplied with a tea-cup, and her front teeth were soon unusually busy with a slice of thin bread and b.u.t.ter. Eating or drinking, her intense old eyes dwelt distantly but a.s.siduously on my small shape; and she at last entered into a long story of how, as a girl, she had been taken to a circus--a circus: and there had seen.... But _what_ she had seen Mr Crimble refused to let her divulge. He jerked forward so hastily that his fragment of toasted scone rolled off his plate into the wild beast's skin, and while, with some little difficulty, he was retrieving it, he a.s.sured us that his mother's memory was little short of miraculous, and particularly in relation to the past.

"I have noticed," he remarked, in what I thought a rather hollow voice, "that the more advanced in years we--er--happily become, the more closely we return to childhood."

"Senile...." I began timidly, remembering Dr Phelps's phrase.

But Mr Crimble hastened on. "Why, mother," he appealed to her, with an indulgent laugh, "I suppose to you I am still nothing but a small boy about that height?" He stretched out a ringless left hand about twenty-four inches above the rose-patterned carpet.

The old lady was not to be so easily smoothed over. "You interrupted me, Harold," she retorted, with some little show of indignation, "in what I was telling Lady Pollacke. Even a child of that size would have been a perfect monstrosity."

A lightning grimace swept over Miss Bullace's square features.

"Ah, ah, ah!" laughed Mr Crimble, "I am rebuked, I am in the corner!

Another scone, Lady Pollacke?" Mrs Crimble was a beautiful old lady; but it was with a rather unfriendly and feline eye that she continued to regard me; and I wondered earnestly if f.a.n.n.y had ever noticed this characteristic.

"The fact of the matter is," said Lady Pollacke, with conviction, "our memories _rust_ for want of exercise. Where, physically speaking, would you be, Mr Crimble, if you hadn't the parish to tramp over? Precisely the same with the mind. Every day I make a personal effort to commit some salient fact to memory--such a fact, for a _trivial_ example, as the date of the Norman Conquest. The consequence is, my husband tells me, I am a veritable encyclopaedia. My father took after me. Alexander the Great, I have read somewhere, could address by name--though one may a.s.sume _not_ Christian name--every soldier in his army. Thomas Babington Macaulay, a great genius, poor man, knew by heart every book he had ever read. A veritable _mine_ of memory. On the other hand, I once had a parlour-maid, Sarah Jakes, who couldn't remember even the simplest of her duties, and if it hadn't been for my constant supervision would have given us port with the soup."

"Perfectly, perfectly true," a.s.sented Miss Bullace. "Now mine is a verbal memory. My mind is a positive magnet for _words_. Method, of course, is everything. I weld. Let us say that a line of a poem terminates with the word _bower_, and the next line commences with _she_, I commit these to memory as one word--_Bowershee_--and so master the sequence. My old friend, Lady Bovill Porter--we were schoolfellows--recommended this method. It was Edmund Kean's, I fancy, or some other well-known actor's. How else indeed, could a great actor _realize_ what he was doing? Word-perfect, you see, he is free."

"Exactly, exactly," sagely nodded Mr Crimble, but with a countenance so colourless and sad that it called back to my remembrance the picture of a martyr--of St Sebastian, I think--that used to hang up in my mother's room.

"And you?"--I discovered Lady Pollacke was rather shrilly inquiring of me. "Is yours a verbal memory like Miss Bullace's; or are you in my camp?"

"Ah, there," cried Mr Crimble, tilting back his chair in sudden enthusiasm. "Miss M. positively puts me to shame. And poetry, Miss Bullace; even your wonderful repertory!"